
Glass L> C/ "5 / — 

Book M~3 



ftiy&r^j 



THE 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



BY 



PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, 

AUTHOR OF "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART.* 
"THE UNEjNOWN RIVER," ETC. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER, 

1885. 






Transfer 
Engineers School Lib*. 
June29,iB31 



TR0W9 

PftlHTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



TO EUGENIE H. 



We have shared together many hours of 
study, and you have been willing, at the cost 
of much patient labor, to cheer the difficult 
paths of intellectual toil by the unfailing sweet- 
ness of your beloved companionship. It seems 
to me that all those things which we have 
learned together are doubly my own ; whilst 
those other studies which I have pursued in 
solitude have never yielded me more than 
a maimed and imperfect satisfaction. The 
dream of my life would be .to associate you 
with all I do if that were possible ; but since 
the ideal can never be wholly realized, let me 
at least rejoice that we have been so little sep- 
arated, and that the subtle influence of your 
finer taste and more delicate perception is 
ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the 
whole atmosphere around me. 



PREFACE. 



I propose, in the following pages, to con- 
sider the possibilities of a satisfactory intel- 
lectual life under various conditions of ordi- 
nary human existence. It will form a part 
of my plan to take into account favorable and 
unfavorable influences of many kinds; and 
my chief purpose, so far as any effect upon 
others may be hoped for, will be to guard 
some who may read the book alike against 
the loss of time caused by unnecessary dis- 
couragement, and the waste of effort which is 
the consequence of misdirected energies. 

I have adopted the form of letters addressed 
to persons of very different position in order 
that every reader may have a chance of find- 
ing what concerns him. The letters, it is un- 
necessary to observe, are in one sense as fic- 
titious as those we "find in novels, for they 
have never been sent to anybody by the post, 
yet the persons to whom they are addressed 
are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from 
the beginning, to think of a real person when 
writing, from an apprehension that by dwell- 
ing in a world too exclusively ideal I might 
lose sight of many impediments which beset 
all actual lives, even the most exceptional and 
fortunate. 



vi PBEFACE. 

The essence of the book may be expressed 
in a few sentences, the rest being little more 
than evidence or illustration. First, it ap- 
pears that all who are born with considerable 
intellectual faculties are urged towards the 
intellectual life by irresistible instincts, as 
water-fowl are urged to an aquatic life; but 
the lower animals have this advantage over 
man, that as their purposes are simpler, so 
they attain them more completely than he 
does. The life of a wild duck is in perfect ac- 
cordance with its instincts, but the life of an 
intellectual man is never on all points per- 
fectly in accordance with his instincts. Many 
of the best intellectual lives known to us have 
been hampered by vexatious impediments of 
the most various and complicated kinds ; and 
when we come to have accurate and intimate 
knowledge of the lives led by our intellectual 
contemporaries, we are always quite sure to 
find that each of them has some great thwart- 
ing difficulty to contend against. Nor is it 
too much to say that if a man were so placed 
and endowed in every way that all his work 
should be made as easy as the ignorant imag- 
ine it to be, that man would find in that very 
facility itself a condition most unfavorable to 
his intellectual growth. So that, however 
circumstances may help us or hinder us, the 
intellectual life is always a contest or a disci- 
pline, and the art or skill of living intellectu- 
ally does not so much consist in surrounding 
ourselves with what is reputed to be advan- 
tageous as in compelling every circumstance 



PREFACE. vii 

and condition of our lives to yield us some 
tribute of intellectual benefit and force, The 
needs of the intellect are as various as intel- 
lects themselves are various: and if a man 
has got high mental culture during his pas- 
sage through life it is of little consequence 
where he acquired it, or how. The school of 
the intellectual man is the place where he 
happens to be, and his teachers are the people, 
books, animals, plants, stones, and earth 
round about him. The feeling almost always 
predominant in the minds of intellectual men 
as they grow older, is not so much one of re- 
gret that their opportunities were not more 
abundant, as of regret that they so often 
missed opportunities which they might have 
turned to better account. 

I have written for all classes, in the convic- 
tion that the intellectual life is really within 
the reach of every one who earnestly desires 
it. The highest culture can never be within 
the reach of those who cannot give the years 
of labor which it costs; and if we cultivate 
ourselves to shine in the eyes of others, to be- 
come famous in literature or science, then of 
course we must give many more hours of la- 
bor than can be spared from a life of practical 
industry. But I am fully convinced of this, 
convinced by the observation of living in- 
stances in all classes, that any man or woman 
of large natural capacity may reach the tone 
of thinking which may justly be called intel- 
lectual, even though that thinking may not 
be expressed in the most perfect language. 



viii PREFACE. 

The essence of intellectual living does not re- 
side in extent of science or in perfection of 
expression, but in a constant preference for 
higher thoughts over lower thoughts, and this 
preference may be the habit of a mind which 
has not any very considerable amount of in- 
formation. This may be very easily demon- 
strated by a reference to men who lived intel- 
lectually in ages when science had scarcely 
begun to exist, and when there w^as but little 
literature that could be of use as an aid to 
culture. The humblest subscriber to a me- 
chanics' institute has easier access to sound 
learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, 
yet both Solomon and Aristotle lived the in- 
tellectual life. Whoever reads English is 
richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, 
yet Plato thought intellectually. It is not 
erudition that makes the intellectual man, 
but a sort of virtue which delights in vigor- 
ous and beautiful thinking, just as moral vir- 
tue delights in vigqrous and beautiful con- 
duct. Intellectual living is not so much an 
accomplishment as a state or condition of 
the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the 
highest and purest truth. It is the continual 
exercise of a firmly noble choice between the 
larger truth and the lesser, between that 
w r hich is perfectly just and that which falls 
a little short of justice. The ideal life would 
be to choose thus firmly and delicately al- 
ways, yet if we often blunder and fail for 
want of perfect wisdom and clear light, have 
we not the inward assurance that our aspira- 



PREFACE. ix 

tion has not been all in vain, that it has 
brought us a little nearer to the Supreme In- 
tellect whose effulgence draws us whilst it 
dazzles? Here is the true secret of that fasci- 
nation which belongs to intellectual pursuits, 
that they reveal to us a little more, and yet a 
little more, of the eternal order of the Uni- 
verse, establishing us so firmly in what is 
known, that we acquire an unshakable confi- 
dence in the laws which govern what is not, 
and never can be, known. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 

BETTER PAGE 

I. To a young man of letters who worked 

excessively 17 

II. To the same . . 22 

III. To a student in uncertain health 27 

IV, To a muscular Christian 42 

V. To a student who neglected bodily exer- 
cise 47 

VI. To an author in mortal disease 53 

VII. To a young man of brilliant ability, who 

had just taken his degree 57 



PART II. 

THE MORAL BASIS. 

I. To a moralist who had said that there was 
a want of moral fibre in the intellectual, 

especially in poets and artists 67 

II. To an undisciplined writer 80 

III. To a friend who suggested the speculation 

" which of the moral virtues w T as most 
essential to the intellectual life " 91 

IV. To a moralist who said that intellectual 

culture was not conducive to sexual 
morality . . c . . . . < 98 



xii CONTESTS, 



PART III. 



OF EDUCATION. 
BETTER PAGE 

I. To a friend who recommended the au- 
thor to learn this thing and that 104 

II. To a friend who studied many things. . . 110 

III. To the same 120 

IV. To a student of literature. 130 

Yo To a country gentleman who regretted 

that his son had the tendencies of a 

dilettant 134 

VI. To the principal of a French college .... 137 

711. To the same 143 

/III. To a student of modern languages 149 

IX. To the same 153 

X. To a student who lamented his defec- 
tive memory 165 

KT. To a master of arts who said that a cer- 
tain distinguished painter was half- 
educated 170 



PART IV. 

THE POWER OF TIME. 

{. To a man of leisure who complained of 

want of time 176 

jJ. To a young man of great talent and energy 

who had magnificent plans for the future 185 
'i %I. To a man of business who desired to make 
himself better acquainted with litera- 
ture, but whose time for reading was 

limited........ 200 

IV. To a student who felt hurried and driven. 207 
V. To a friend who, though he had no pro- 
fession, could not find time for his vari- 
ous intellectual pursuits 212 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAKT V. 

THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 
LETTER PAGE 

I. To a very rich student 216 

II. To a genius careless in money matters . . . 224 
III. To a student in great poverty 239 

PART VI. 

CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 

I. To a young gentleman who had firmly re- 
solved never to wear anything but a gray 

coat 246 

II. To a conservative who had accused the 

author of a want of respect for tradition 254 

III. To a lady who lamented that her son had 

intellectual doubts concerning the dog- 
mas of the church 263 

IV. To the son of the lady to whom the pre- 

ceding letter was addressed 269 

V To a friend who seemed to take credit to 
himself, intellectually, from the nature 

of his religious belief 276 

VI. To a Roman Catholic friend who accused 
the intellectual class of a want of rever- 
ence for authority. , . 280 

PART VII. 

WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 

I. To a young gentleman of intellectual 
tastes, who, without having as yet any 
particular lady in view, had expressed, 
in a general way, his determination to 
get married ......,.,., 265 



xiv CONTENTS. 

LETTER PAGE 

II. To a young gentleman who contemplated 

marriage . 291 

III. To the same 299 

IT, To the same. 306 

Y. To the same 312 

YI. To a solitary student 322 

YII. To a lady of high culture who found it 
difficult to associate with persons of 

her own sex 325 

YIII. To a lady of high culture 330 

IX. To a young man of the middle class, well 
educated, who complained that it was 
difficult for him to live agreeably with 
his mother, a person of somewhat au- 
thoritative disposition, but uneducated 333 

PART YIII. 

ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 

I. To a young English nobleman 341 

II. To an English democrat 358 

PART IX. 

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 

I. To a lady who doubted the reality of in- 
tellectual friendships 374 

II. To a young gentleman who lived much in 

fashionable society 379 

III. To the same. 384 

IY. To the same , 391 

V. To a young gentleman who kept entirely 

out of company 397 

VI. To a friend who kindly warned the author 

of the bad effects of solitude «.,... 402 



CONTENTS. XV 

PART X. 

INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 
LETTER PAGE 

I. To a young author whilst he was writing 

his first book 415 

II. To a student in the first ardor of intel- 
lectual ambition 422 

III. To an intellectual man who desired an 

outlet for his energies 431 

IVo To the friend of a man of high culture 

who produced nothing 441 

V. To a student who felt hurried and driven 446 
VI. To an ardent friend who took no rest. . 451 

VII. To the same 456 

VIII. To a friend (highly cultivated) who con- 
gratulated himself on having entirely 
abandoned the habit of reading news- 
papers 460 

IX. To an author who appreciated contem- 
porary literature 470 

X. To an author who kept very irregular 

hours 476 



PART XI. 

TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 

L To a young gentleman of ability and cult- 
ure who had not decided about his pro- 
fession o . . . 488 

II. To a young gentleman who had literary 

and artistic tastes, but no profession 499 

III. To a young gentleman who wished to de- 
vote himself to literature as a profession 504 
IV To an energetic and successful cotton 

manufacturer. 513 



xvi CONTENTS. 

LETTER PAGE 

Y. To a young Etonian who thought of be- 
coming- a cotton-spinner 522 

PART XII. 

SURROUNDINGS. 

I. To a friend who often changed his place of 

residence 580 

II. To a friend who maintained that surround- 
ings were a matter of indifference to a 

thoroughly occupied mind 539 

III. To an artist who was fitting up a magnifi- 
cent new studio 546 



THE 

INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



PAET I. 

THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 



LETTER I. 

TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED 
EXCESSIVELY. 

Mental labor believed to be innocuous to healthy persons- 
Difficulty of testing this—Case of the poet Wordsworth- 
Case of an eminent living author—Case of a literary clergy- 
man—Case of an energetic tradesman— Instances of two 
Londoners who wrote professionally — Scott's paralysis — 
Byron's death— All intellectual labor proceeds on a phys- 
ical basis. 

So little is really known about the action of 
the nervous system, that to go into the sub- 
ject from the physiological point of view 
would be to undertake a most difficult in- 
vestigation, entirely beyond the competence 
of an unscientific person like your present 
correspondent. You will, therefore, permit 
me, in reference to this, to leave you to the 
teaching of the most advanced physiologists 
2 



18 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of the time ; but I may be able to offer a few 
practical suggestions, based on the experience 
of intellectual workers, which may be of use 
to a man whose career is likely to be one of 
severe and almost uninterrupted intellectual 
labor. 

A paper was read several years ago before 
the members of a society in London, in which 
the author maintained that mental labor was 
never injurious to a perfectly healthy human 
organization, and that the numerous cases of 
break-down, which are commonly attributed 
to excessive brain-work, are due, in reality, to 
the previous operation of disease. 

This is one of those assertions which cannot 
be answered in a sentence. Concentrated 
within the briefest expression it comes to this, 
that mental labor cannot produce disease, but 
may aggravate the consequences of disease 
which already exists. 

The difficulty of testing this is obvious ; for 
so long as health remains quite perfect, it re- 
mains perfect, of course, whether the brain is 
used or not ; and when failure of health be- 
comes manifest, it is not always easy to decide 
in what degree mental labor may have been 
the cause of it. Again, the accuracy of so 
general a statement cannot be proved by any 
number of instances in its favor, since it is 
universally admitted that brain-work is not 
the only cause of disease, and no one affirms 
that it is more than one amongst many causes 
which may impede the bodily functions. 

When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 19 

composing the "White Doe of Rylstone," he 
received a wound in his foot, and he observed 
that the continuation of the literary labor 
increased the irritation of the wound ; where- 
as by suspending his work he could diminish 
it, and absolute mental rest produced a perfect 
cure. In connection with this incident he 
remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied 
by protracted labor in composition, always 
brought on more or less of bodily derange- 
ment. He preserved himself from perma- 
nently injurious consequences by his excellent 
habits of life. 

A very eminent living author, whose name 
I do not feel at liberty to mention, is always 
prostrated by severe illness at the conclusion 
of each of his works ; another is unwell every 
Sunday, because he does not write on that 
day, and the recoil after the mental stretch of 
the week is too much for him. 

In the case of Wordsworth, the physical 
constitution is believed to have been sound. 
His health at seventy-two was excellent ; the 
two other instances are more doubtful in this 
respect, yet both these writers enjoy very fair 
health, after the pressure of brain-work has 
been removed for any considerable time. A 
clergyman of robust organization, who does 
a good deal of literary work at intervals, told 
me that, whenever he had attempted to make 
it regular, the consequence had always been 
distressing nervous sensations, from which at 
other times he was perfectly free. A trades- 
man, whose business affords an excellent out- 



20 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

let for energetic bodily activity, told me that 
having attempted, in addition to his ordinary 
work, to acquire a foreign language which 
seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been 
obliged to abandon it on account of alarming 
cerebral symptoms. This man has immense 
vigor and energy, but the digestive functions, 
in this instance, are sluggish. However, 
when he abandoned study, the cerebral incon- 
veniences disappeared, and have never re- 
turned since. 

Two Londoners who followed literature as a 
profession, and who both worked to excess, 
had cerebral attacks of a still more decided 
kind. One of them, after his recovery, re- 
solved to regulate his work in future, so that 
it might never pass the limits of moderation. 
He is now living, and in possession of a re- 
markably clear and richly furnished intel- 
lect. The other, who returned to his old hab- 
its, died in two years from softening of the 
brain. I am not aware that in these cases 
there was any other disease than that pro- 
duced by an immoderate use of the mental 
powers. 

The health of Sir Walter Scott — we have 
this on his own testimony — was uncommonly 
robust, and there is every reason to believe 
that his paralysis was brought on by the ex- 
cessive labor which resulted from his pecun- 
iary embarrassments, and that without such 
excessive mental labor and anxiety he would 
have preserved his health much longer. The 
death of Byron was due, no doubt, quite as 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 21 

much to habits of dissipation as to poetical ex- 
citement; still it is probable that he would 
have borne either of these evil influences if it 
had not been accompanied by the other ; and 
that to a man whose way of life was so ex- 
hausting as Byron's was, the addition of con- 
stant poetical excitement and hard work in 
production, may be said without exaggeration 
to have killed him. We know that Scott, 
with all his facility, had a dread of that kind 
of excitement, and withdrew from the poet- 
ical arena to avoid it. We know, too, that 
the brain of Southey proved ultimately unable 
to endure the burden of the tasks he laid 
upon it. 

Difficult as it may be in some instances to 
ascertain quite accurately whether an over- 
worked man had perfectly sound bodily health 
to begin with, obvious as it may be that in 
many breakdowns the final failure has been 
accelerated by diseases independent of mental 
work, the facts remain, that the excessive ex- 
ercise of the mental powers is injurious to 
bodily health and that all intellectual labor 
proceeds upon a physical basis. No man can 
safely forget this, and act as if he were a pure 
spirit, superior to physical considerations. 
Let me then, in other letters on this subject, 
direct your attention to the close connection 
which exists between intellectual production 
and the state of the body and the brain ; not 
with the authority of a physician, but with 
the sympathy of a fellow-laborer, who has 
learned something from his own experience, 



22 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and still more from the more varied experi* 
ence of his friends. 



LETTER II. 

TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED 
EXCESSIVELY. 

Mental labor rarely compatible with the best physical condi- 
tions — Wordsworth's manner of composition — Mr. W. F. 
A. Delane— George Sand working under pressure— Sir 
Walter Scott's field-sports— Physical exercise the best 
tranquillizer of the nervous system— Eugene Sue— Shel- 
ley's love of boating— Nervousness the affliction of brain- 
workers — Nature's kindly warning — Working by spurts — 
Beckf ord — Byron — Indolence of men of genius fortunate 
— Distressing nature of cerebral fatigue. 

It is possible that many of the worst results 
of intellectual labor may be nothing more 
than indirect results. We may suffer, not 
from the work itself, but from sedentary 
confinement, from want of exercise, from 
insufficient variety and amusement. 

Mental labor is seldom compatible with 
the best physical conditions; it is so some- 
times, however, or may be made so by an 
effort of will and resolution. Womsworth 
composed his poetry in the open air, as he 
walked, and so preserved himself from the 
evil of close confinement to the desk. Mr, 
W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the 
organization of the Times newspaper when it 
was under his management, began by doing 
law reports for that paper, in London and on 
circuit. His appearance of rude health sur« 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 23 

prised other members of his profession, but 
he accounted for it by the care he took to 
compensate for the bad air and sedentary la- 
bor in the courts of law by travelling between 
the assize towns on horseback, and also by a 
more than commonly temperate way of life, 
since he carefully avoided the bar dinners, 
eating and drinking for health alone. It is 
possible to endure the most unhealthy labor 
when there are frequent intervals of invigor- 
ating exercise, accompanied by habits of 
strict sobriety. The plan, so commonly re- 
sorted to, of trying to get health in stock for 
the rest of the year by a fortnight's hurried 
travelling in the autumn, is not so good as 
Mr. Delane's way of getting the week's sup- 
ply of health during the course of the week 
itself. 

It happened once that George Sand was 
hurried by the proprietor of a newspaper who 
wanted one of her novels as a feuilleton. 
She has always been a careful and deliberate 
worker, very anxious to give all necessary 
labor in preparation, and, like all such con- 
scientious laborers, she can scarcely endure 
to be pushed. However, on this occasion she 
worked overtime, as they say in Lancashire, 
and to enable herself to bear the extra pres- 
sure she did part of the work at night in or- 
der to keep several hours of daylight clear 
for her walks in the country, where she lived. 
Many writers, in the same situation, would 
have temporarily abandoned exercise, but 
George Sand clung to it all the more at a 



24 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

time when it was especially necessary that 
she should be well. In the same way Sir 
"Walter Scott counterbalanced the effects of 
sedentary occupation by his hearty enjoy- 
ment of field-sports. It has been supposed 
that his outdoor exercise, which to weaker 
persons appears excessive, may have helped 
to bring on the stroke of paralysis which final* 
ly disabled him ■ but the fact is, that when the 
stroke arrived Sir Walter had altered his 
habits of life in obedience to what he believed 
to'be his duty, and had abandoned, or nearly 
so, the active amusements of his happier 
years. I believe rather that whilst he took so 
much exercise his robust constitution not 
only enabled him to endure it without injury, 
but required it to keep the nervous system 
healthy, in spite of his hard work in literary 
composition. Physical exercise, when the 
constitution is strong enough to endure it, is 
by far the best tranquillizer of the nervous 
system which has yet been discovered, and 
Sir Walter's life at Abbotsford was, in this 
respect at least, grounded on the true philoso- 
phy of conduct. The French romancer, Eu- 
gene Sue, wrote till ten o'clock every morn- 
ing, and passed the rest of the day, when at 
his country house, either in horse-exercise, or 
field-sports, or gardening, for all of which he 
had a liking which amounted to passion. 
Shelley's delight was boating, which at once 
exercised his muscles and relieved his mind 
from the weariness of incessant invention or 
speculation. It will generally be found, that 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 23 

whenever a man of much intellectual distinc- 
tion has maintained his powers in full activ- 
ity, it has been by avoiding the bad effects of 
an entirely sedentary life. 

I well believe that a person naturally ro- 
bust, with a clear and powerful brain, could 
bear twelve or fourteen hours' work every 
day for years together so far as the work it- 
self is concerned, if only so large an expendi- 
ture of time left a sufficient margin for amuse- 
ment, and exercise, and sleep. But the pri- 
vation of exercise, by weakening the digestive 
and assimilative powers, reduces the flow of 
healthy and rich blood to the brain — the brain 
requires an enormous quantity of blood, es- 
pecially when the cerebral matter is rapidly 
destroyed by intellectual labor — and usually 
brings on nervousness, the peculiar affliction 
of the over-driven mental laborer. This ner- 
vousness is Nature's kindly warning, preserv- 
ing us, if we attend to it in time, from much 
more serious consequences. The best prevent- 
ive of it, and often the only cure, is plenty of 
moderate exercise. The customs of the up- 
per classes in -England happily provide this 
in the best shape, that of amusement enjoyed 
in society, but our middle classes in large 
towns do not get nearly enough of it, and the 
most studious are always strongly tempted to 
neglect it altogether. 

Men of great imaginative power are com- 
monly addicted to a habit which is peculiarly 
dangerous. They work as race-horses work, 
with the utmost intensity of effort during 



26 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

short spaces of time, taxing all their powers 
whilst the brilliant effort lasts. When Beck- 
ford wrote the wonderful tale " Vathek " in 
his twentieth year, he did it at a single sit- 
ting, which lasted for three days and two 
nights, and it cost him a serious illness. Sev- 
eral of the best poems by Byron were written, 
if not quite with equal rapidity, still on the 
same principle of composition at white heat. 
In cases of this kind, Nature provides her 
own remedy in the indolence of the imagina- 
tive temperament, which leaves large spaces 
of time for the action of the recuperative proc- 
esses. The same law governs the physical 
energies of the carnivora, which maintain, or 
recover, their capacity for extraordinary ef- 
fort by intervals of absolute repose. In its 
long spaces of mental rest the imaginative 
temperament recruits itself by amusement, 
which in England usually includes physical 
exercise of some kind. 

This fortunate indolence of men of genius 
, would in most instances ensure their safety if 
they were not impelled by necessity to labor 
beyond the suggestions of inclination. The 
exhausted brain never of itself seeks the ad- 
ditional exhaustion of hard work. You know 
very well when you are tired, and at such 
times the natural man in you asks plainly 
enough for rest and recreation. The art is so 
to arrange our lives that the natural man may 
sometimes have his way, and forget, if only 
for a time, the labors which lead to weari- 
ness—not to that pleasant weariness of tha 



THE PHYSICAL BASTS. 27 

body which promises soundest sleep, but the 
distressing fatigue of the exhausted spirit 
which is tortured by the importunity of ideas 
which it is unable to express, and apprehen- 
sions that it cannot* dismiss, which fights 
through the sleepless night the phantoms of 
unconquerable horror. 

Note. — The bad effect of literary composition on the physi 
cal state which was observed by Wordsworth in his own case 
was also noticed by Shelley during the composition of the 
" Cenci,' 1 which, he said, had been a fine antidote to nervous 
medicines, and kept, he believed, the pain in his side " as sticks 
do a fire. ' ' These influences are best observed in people whose 
health is delicate. Although Joubert, for example, had an 
extremely clear intellect, he could scarcely write at all on ac- 
count of the physical consequences. I have come to the con- 
clusion that literary work acts simply as a strong stimulant. 
In moderate quantities it is not only innocent, but decidedly 
beneficial; in excess it acts like poison on the nervous system. 
What constitutes excess every man has to find out by his own 
experience. A page was excess to Joubert, a chapter was 
moderation to Alexandre Dumas. 



LETTER III. 

TO A STUDENT IN UNCERTAIN HEALTH. 

Habits of Kant, the philosopher — Objection to an over-minute 
regularity of habit — Value of independence of character-^ 
Case of an English author — Case of an English resident 
in Paris— Scott an abundant eater and drinker— Goethe 
also— An eminent French publisher— Turgot— Importance 
of good cookery— Wine drinking— Ale— The aid of stimu- 
lants treacherous— The various effects of tobacco— Tea and 
coffee— Case of an English clergyman— Balzac— The Ara- 
bia custom of coffee-drinking— Wisdom of occasionally 
using stimulants. 

Immanuel Kant, who was a master in the 
art of taking care of himself, had by practice 



28 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

acquired a dexterous mode of folding himself 
up in the bed-clothes, by passing them over 
and under his shoulders, so that, when the 
operation was complete, he was shut up like 
the silkworm in his c<*coon. ' ' When I am 
thus snugly folded up in my bed," he would 
say to his friends, ' ' I say to myself, can any 
man be in better health than I am? " 

There is nothing in the lives of philosophers 
more satisfactory than this little passage. If 
Kant had said to himself, ' k Can anybody be 
wiser, more learned, more justly deserving of 
immortal fame than I am?" we should have 
felt, that however agreeable this opinion might 
have been to the philosopher who held it, his 
private satisfaction stood in need of confirma- 
tion from without ; and even if he had really 
been all this, we might have reflected that 
wisdom and learning still leave their pos- 
sessor exposed to the acutest kinds of suffer- 
ing. But when a philosopher rolls himself up 
at night, and congratulates himself on the 
possession of perfect health, we only think 
what a happy man he was to possess that first 
of blessings, and what a sensible man to know 
the value of it ! And Kant had a deeper hap- 
piness in this reflection than any which could 
spring from the mere consciousness of possess- 
ing one of the unearned gifts of nature. The 
excellence of his health was due in part to a 
sufficiently good constitution, but it was due 
also to his own extreme carefulness about his 
habits. By an unceasing observation of his 
own bodily life, as far as possible removed 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 29 

from the anxiety of hypochondriacs, he man- 
aged to keep the physical machine in such 
regular order, that for more than thirty years 
he always rose precisely at the same minute. 
If his object had been health for health's 
sake, the result would still have been well 
worth any sacrifices of momentary inclination 
that it cost him ; but Kant had a higher pur- 
pose. He well knew that the regularity of 
the intellectual life depended entirely on the 
regularity of the bodily functions, and, un- 
like the foolish men alluded to by Goethe who 
pass the day in complaining of headache, 
and the night in drinking the wine that pro- 
duces it, Kant not only knew that regular 
health was necessary to his work as a philos- 
opher, but did everything in his power to 
preserve it. Few intellectual , laborers have 
in this respect given evidence of such persist- 
ent strength of will. 

In his manner of living he did not consult 
custom, but the needs of his individual na- 
ture. It is not always easy for great brain- 
workers to follow with perfect fidelity the 
customs of the people about them. These 
usages have been gradually formed by the 
majority to suit the needs of the majority; 
but there are cases where a close adher- 
ence to them w r ould be a serious hindrance 
to the highest and best activity. A good 
example of this is Kant's intense antipathy 
to beer. It did not suit him, and he was 
right in his non-conformity to German usage 
on this point, but he was mistaken in heliev 



SO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ing beer to be universally injurious. There 
is a very general belief in England that what 
is called a good breakfast is the foundation of 
the labor of the day. Kant's breakfast, which 
he took at five in the morning at all seasons 
of the year, consisted of a cup of tea and a 
pipe of tobacco. On this he worked eight 
hours, either in lecturing or writing— a long 
stretch of uninterrupted labor. He dined at 
one, and this was his only meal, for he had 
no supper. The single repast was a deviation 
from ordinary usage, but Kant found that it 
suited him, probably because he read in the 
evening from six till a quarter to ten, and a 
second meal might have interfered with this 
by diminishing his power of attention. There 
exists a strong medical objection to this habit 
of taking only one meal in twenty-four 
hours, which indeed is almost unknown in 
England, though not extremely rare on the 
Continent. I know an old gentleman who 
for forty years has lived as Kant did, and 
enjoys excellent health and uncommon men- 
tal clearness. 

A detail which illustrates Kant's attention 
to whatever could affect his physical life, is 
his rule to withdraw his mind from every- 
thing requiring effort fifteen minutes before 
he went to bed. His theory, which is fully 
confirmed by the experience of others, was, 
that there was a risk of missing sleep if the 
brain was not tranquillized before bed-time. 
He knew that the intellectual life of the day 
depended on the night's rest, and he took this 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 31 

precaution to secure it. The regularity of 
his daily walk, taken during the afternoon in 
all weathers, and the strict limitation of the 
hours of rest, also helped the soundness of his 
sleep. 

He would not walk out in company, for the 
whimsical reason that if he opened his mouth 
a colder air would reach his lungs than that 
which passed through the nostrils; and he 
would not eat alone, but always had guests to 
dinner. There are good physiological reasons 
in favor of pleasant society at table, and, be- 
sides these, there are good intellectual rea- 
sons also. 

By attention to these rules of his, Kant man- 
aged to keep both body and mind in a work- 
ing order, more uninterrupted than is usual 
with men who go through much intellectual 
labor. The solitary objection to his system is 
the excessive regularity of habit to which it 
bound him by chains of his own forging. He 
found a quiet happiness in this regularity; 
indeed, happiness is said to be more commonly 
found in habit that in anything else, so deeply 
does it satisfy a great permanent instinct of 
our nature. But a minute regularity of habit 
is objectionable, because it can only be prac- 
ticable at home, and is compatible only with 
an existence of the most absolute tranquillity. 
Kant did not travel, and never could have 
travelled. He was a bachelor, and could not 
have ceased to be a bachelor, without a 
disturbance that would have been intolera- 
ble to him. He enjoyed the full benefits of 



32 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

his system without experiencing its disad- 
vantages, but any considerable change of sit- 
uation would have made the disadvantages 
apparent. Few lives can be so minutely reg- 
ulated without risk of future inconvenience. 
Kant's example is a good one so far as this, 
that it proved a sort of independence of char- 
acter which would be valuable to every stu- 
dent. All who need to keep their minds in the 
best possible condition ought to have resolu- 
tion enough to regulate their living in a man- 
ner which experience, in their case, proves to 
be most favorable. Whatever may be the 
authority of custom, a wise man makes 
himself independent of usages which are im- 
pediments to his best activity. I know an 
author who was always unwell about eleven 
o'clock in the morning — so unwell that he 
could do nothing but lament his miserable 
fate. Knowing by experience the powerful 
effect of regimen, I inquired whether he en- 
joyed his breakfast. "No, he did not." 
" Then why did he attempt to eat any break- 
fast? " It turned out that this foolish man 
swallowed every morning two cups of bad 
coffee and a quantity of greasy food, from a 
patriotic deference to the customs of his coun- 
try. He was persuaded to abandon this un- 
suitable habit and to eat nothing till half -past 
ten, when his adviser prescribed a well-cooked 
little dejeuner a la fourchette, accompanied by 
half a bottle of sound Bordeaux. The effect 
was magical. My friend felt light and cheer- 
ful before dejeuner , and worked quite happily 



TILE PHYSICAL BASIS. 33 

and well, whilst after dejeuner he felt like a 
horse that has eaten his corn. Nor was the 
good effect a transitory one ; the bad symp- 
toms never returned and he still adheres to 
his new arrangemen a . This little reform made 
a wretched existence nappy, and has had for 
its result an increase in production with a dim- 
inution of fatigue. The explanation is that 
the stomach did not ask for the early break- 
fast, and had a hard fight to overcome it, 
after which came exhaustion and a distaste 
both for food and work. There are cases where 
an opposite rule is the right one. An English- 
man living in Paris found the French de- 
jeuner unsuitable for him, and discovered that 
he worked best on a substantial English break- 
fast, with strong tea, at eight in the morning, 
after which he went on working all day with- 
out any further nourishment till dinner at six 
in the evening. A friend of Sir Walter Scott's, 
who had stayed with him at Abbotsford, told 
me that Sir Walter ate and drank like every- 
body else as to times and seasons, but much 
more abundantly than people of less vigorous 
organization. Goethe used to work till eleven 
without taking anything, then he drank a cup 
of chocolate and worked till one. u At two 
he dined. This meal was the important meal 
of the day. His appetite was immense. Even 
on the days when he complained of not being 
hungry he ate much more than most men. 
Puddings, sweets, and cakes were always wel- 
come. He sat a long while over his wine. 
He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two 
8 



34 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

or three bottles." An eminent French pub* 
lisher, one of the most clear -headed and 
hard-working men of his generation, never 
touched food or drink till six in the evening, 
when he ate an excellent dinner with his 
guests. He found this system favorable to 
his work, but a man of less robust constitution 
would have felt exhausted in the course of the 
day. 

Turgot could not work well till after he had 
dined copiously, but many men cannot think 
after a substantial meal ; and here, in spite of 
the example set by Scott and Goethe, let me 
observe that nothing interferes so much with 
Srainwork as over-eating. The intellectual 
workman requires nourishment of the best 
possible quality, but the quantity ought 
always to be well within the capacity of his 
digestive powers. The truth appears to be, 
that whilst the intellectual life makes very 
large demands upon nutrition — for cerebral 
activity cannot go forward without constant 
supplies of force, which must come ultimate- 
ly from what we have eaten — this kind of life, 
being sedentary, is unfavorable to the work 
of digestion. Brain-workers cannot eat like 
sportsmen and farmers without losing many 
hours in torpor, and yet they need nutrition 
as much as if they led active lives. The only 
way out of this difficulty is to take care that 
the food is good enough for a moderate quan- 
tity of it to maintain the physical and mental 
powers. The importance of scientific cookery 
can hardly be exaggerated. Intellectual la* 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 35 

bor is, in its origin, as dependent upon the 
art of cookery as the dissemination of its re- 
sults is dependent upon paper-making and 
printing. This is one of those matters which 
people cannot be brought to consider serious- 
ly ; but cookery in its perfection — the great sci- 
ence of preparing food in the way best suited 
to our use — is really the most important of all 
sciences, and the mother of the arts. The 
I wonderful theory that the most ignorant 
I cookery is the most favorable to health is 
only fit for the dark ages. It is grossly and 
stupidly untrue. A scientific cook will 
keep you in regular health, when an ignorant 
one will offer you the daily alternative of 
starving or indigestion. 

The great question of drinks is scarcely less 
important. Sound natural wines, not strength- 
ened by any addition of alcohol, are known 
to supply both stimulus and nourishment to 
the brain. Goethe's practice was not irra- 
tional, though he drank fifty thousand bottles 
in his lifetime. Still it is not necessary to 
imitate him to this extent. The wine-drink- 
ing populations have keener and livelier wits 
than those who use other beverages. It is 
proved by long experience that the pure juice 
of the grape sustains the force and activity of 
the brain. The poets who from age to age 
have sung the praise of wine were not wholly 
either deceivers or deceived. In the lands oi 
the vine, where the plant is looked upon as a 
nursing mother, men do not injure their health 
by drinking ; but in the colder North, where 



m THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the grape can never ripen, the deaths from 
intemperance are frequent. Bread and wine 
are almost pure gifts of nature, though both 
are prepared by man after the old traditional 
ways. These are not poisons, but gin and 
absinthe are poisons, madness poured out 
from a bottle ! Kant and G-oethe loved the 
pure Rhine wine, and their brains were clear 
and vigorous to the utmost span of life. It 
was not wine that ruined Burns and Byron, 
or Baudelaire, or Alfred de Musset. 

Notwithstanding Kant's horror of beer, that 
honest northern drink deserves our friendly 
recognition. It has quite a peculiar effect 
upon the nervous system, giving a rest and 
calm which no other drink can procure for it 
so safely. It is said that beer drinkers are 
slow, and a little stupid ; that they have an 
ox-like placidity not quite favorable to any 
brilliant intellectual display. But there are 
times when this placidity is what the laboring 
brain most needs. After the agitations of too 
active thinking there is safety in a tankard of 
ale. The wine drinkers are agile, but they 
are excitable; the beer drinkers are heavy, 
but in their heaviness there is peace. In that 
clear golden drink which England has brewed 
for more than a thousand Octobers, and will 
brew for a thousand more, we may find per- 
haps some explanation of that absence of ir- 
ritability which is the safe-guard of the na- 
tional character, which makes it faithful in 
its affections, easy to govern, not easy to ex- 
cite to violence. 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 31 

If I have spoken favorably of beer and wine 
as having certain intellectual uses, please re- 
member that I recommend only the habitual 
use of them, not mad rites of Bacchus, and 
even the habitual use only just so far as it 
may suit the individual constitution. The 
liberal regimen of Scott and Goethe would 
not answ T er in every case, and there are or- 
ganizations, often very robust, in w^hich in- 
toxicating drinks of all kinds, even in the 
most moderate quantity, impede the brain's 
action instead of aiding it. Two of the most 
able men I have ever known could not drink 
pure wine of any kind because it sent the 
blood to the head, with consequent cerebral 
oppression. And whilst on this subject I 
ought to observe, that the aid which these 
stimulants afford, even when the body grate- 
fully accepts them, is often treacherous from 
its very acceptability. Men who are over- 
driven — and the number of such men is un- 
happily very great in these days — say that 
without stimulants they could not get through 
their labor; but the stimulants often delude 
us as to the limits of our natural powers and 
encourage us to attempt too much. The help 
they give us is not altogether illusory ; under 
certain limitations it is real, but many have 
gone farther than the reality of the assistance 
warranted. The ally brings to us an increase 
of forces, but he comes with appearances of 
power surpassing the reality, and we under- 
take tasks beyond our strength. In drinking, 
as in eating, the best rale for the intellectual 



38 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

is moderation in quantity with good quality, 
a sound wine, and not enough of it to foster 
self-delusion. 

The use of tobacco has so much extended it- 
self in the present generation that we are all 
obliged to make a decision for ourselves on 
the ancient controversy between its friends 
and enemies. We cannot form a reasonable 
opinion about tobacco without bearing in 
mind that it produces, according to circum- 
stances, one of two entirely distinct and even 
opposite classes of effects. In certain states 
of the body it acts as a stimulant, in other 
states as a narcotic. People who have a dis- 
like to smoking affirm that it stupefies ; but 
this assertion, at least so far as the temporary 
consequences are concerned, is not supported 
by experience. Most of the really brilliant 
conversations that I have listened to have 
been accompanied by clouds of tobacco- 
smoke ; and a great deal of the best literary 
composition that is produced by contemporary 
authors is wrought by men who are actually 
smoking whilst they work. My own expe- 
rience is that very moderate smoking acts as 
a pleasant stimulus upon the brain, whilst it 
produces a temporary lassitude of the mus- 
cular system, not perceptible in times of rest, 
but an appreciable hindrance in times of mus- 
cular exertion. It is better therefore for men 
who feel these effects from tobacco to avoid it 
when they are in exercise, and to use it only 
when the body rests and the mind labors. 
Pray remember*, however, that this is the ex- 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 30 

perience of an exceedingly moderate smoker, 
who has not yet got himself into the general 
condition of body which is brought on by a 
larger indulgence in tobacco. On the other 
hand, it is evident that men engaged in phys- 
ical labor find a muscular stimulus in occa- 
sional smoking, and not a temporary lassitude. 
It is probable that the effect varies with in- 
dividual cases, and is never precisely what 
our own experience would lead us to imagine. 
For excessive smokers, it appears to be little 
more than the tranquillizing of a sort of un- 
easiness, the continual satisfaction of a con- 
tinual craving. I have never been able to as- 
certain that moderate smoking diminished in- 
tellectual force ; but I have observed in exces- 
sive smokers a decided weakening of the will, 
and a preference for talking about work to 
the effort of actual labor. The opinions of 
medical men on this subject are so much at 
variance that their science only adds to our 
uncertainty. One doctor tells me that the 
most moderate smoking is unquestionably in- 
jurious, whilst others affirm that it is inno- 
cent. Speaking simply from self-observation, 
I find that in my own case tea and coffee are 
far more perilous than tobacco. 

Almost all English people are habitual tea- 
drinkers, and as the tea they drink is very 
strong, they may be said to use it in excess. 
The unpleasant symptoms which tea-poison- 
ing produces in a patient not inured by habit, 
disappear in the seasoned tea-drinker, leaving 
only a certain exhilaration, which appears to 



40 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

be perfectly innocuous. If tea is a safe stim- 
ulant, it is certainly an agreeable one, and 
there seems to be no valid reason why brain- 
workers should refuse themselves that solace. 
I knew a worthy clergyman many years ago 
who from the most conscientious motives de- 
nied himself ale and wine, but found a foun- 
tain of consolation in the tea-pot. His usual 
allowance was sixteen cups, all of heroic 
strength, and the effect upon his brain seems 
to have been altogether favorable, for his ser- 
mons were both long and eloquent, and to 
this day he is preaching still, without any 
diminution of his powers. French people 
find in coffee the most efficacious remedy for 
the temporary torpor of the mind which re- 
sults from the processes of digestion. Balzac 
drank great quantities of coffee whilst he 
wrote; and this, it is believed, brought on 
the terrible nervous disease that accelerated 
his end. The best proof that tea and coffee 
are favorable to intellectual expression is that 
all nations use one or the other as aids to 
conversation. In Mr. Palgrave's Travels in 
Arabia there is never any talk without the 
inevitable coffee, that fragrant Arabian berry 
prepared with such delicate cunning that it 
yields the perfect aroma. 

The wisdom of occasionally using these va- 
rious stimulants for intellectual purposes is 
proved by a single consideration. Each of 
us has a little cleverness and a great deal of 
sluggish stupidity. There are certain occa- 
sions when we absolutely need the little clev- 



THE PHYSICAL BJ < r ^ 4; 

, erness that we possess. The orato* needs it 
when he speaks, the poet when he versifies, 
but neither cares how stupid he may become 
when the oration is delivered and the lyric 
set down on paper. The stimulant serves to 
bring out the talent when it is wanted, like 
the wind in the pipes of an organ. "What 
will it matter if I am even a little duller after- 
wards? " says the genius ; " I can afford to be 
dull when I have done." But the truth still 
remains that there are stimulants and stimu- 
lants. Not the nectar of the gods themselves 
were worth the dash of a wave upon the 
beach, and the pure cool air of the morning. 

Note. — What is said in the above letter about the employ- 
ment of stimulants is intended to apply only to cases in which 
there is no organic disease. The harm which diseased per- 
sons do to themselves by conforming to customs which are 
innocent for others is as lamentable as it is easily avoidable. 
Two bottles of any natural wine grown above the latitude of 
Lyons are a permissible daily allowance to a man whose or- 
gans are all sound ; but the doctors in the wine districts unan- 
imously forbid pure wine when there is a chronic inflamma- 
tory tendency. In these cases even the most honest Bordeaux 
ought to be diluted with twice its volume of water. There 
are many chronic diseases which tobacco irritat3S and accel- 
erates. Both wine and tobacco are injurious to weak eyes. 



42 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER IV. 

TO A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN. 

Muscular and intellectual tendencies in two boys— Difficulty 
of finding time to satisfy both— Plato on the influences of 
music and gymnastics — Somnolence and digestion— Neg- 
lect of literature — Natural restlessness of the active tem- 
perament—Case of a Garibaldian officer— Difficulty of 
taking a sufficient interest in exercise — A boar hunt. 

I know two little boys, sons of a near neigh- 
bor, who have from childhood exhibited op- 
posite tendencies. One of them is incessant- 
ly active, always out of doors in any weather, 
busy about horses, and farming, and game, 
heedless of his books, and studying only un- 
der positive compulsion. The other sits at 
home with his lessons or a story book, and 
only goes out because he is incited by the fra- 
ternal example. The two lads represent two 
distinct varieties of human life, the active 
and the intellectual. The elder is happiest 
during physical exertion; the younger is 
happiest when his brain is fully occupied. 
Left entirely to themselves, without the 
equalizing influence of the outside world and 
the ways of living which general custom ha,s 
established, they would lead the most opposite 
lives. The elder would inevitably become a 
farmer, that he might live in the country and 
take exercise all day long, or else he would 
seek adventure in wild travel, or in romantic 
warfare ; but the younger would very quick- 
ly be taken possession of by some engrossing 
intellectual pursuit, and lead the life of a sed- 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 48 

entary student. The problem which these 
two young lives have before them is the rec- 
onciliation of their tendencies. Since they 
come of cultivated parents, the intellectual 
lad has the better chance of following his own 
bent. Both will have to take their Universi- 
ty degrees, and the younger has the advan- 
tage there. Still there are powerful influ- 
ences in favor of the elder. His activity will be 
encouraged by the admiration of his compan- 
ions, and by the example of the country gen- 
tlemen who are his neighbors. He can ride, 
and row, and swim ■ he is beginning to shoot ; 
at twenty he will be a sportsman. When 
once he has taken his degree, I wonder what 
will be the advances in his intellectual culture, 
Fraternal and social influences will preserve 
the younger from absolute physical inaction ; 
but there are not any influences powerful 
enough to keep the elder safe from intellect- 
ual rust. 

If you, who are a distinguished sportsman 
and athlete, would kindly inform us with 
perfect frankness of the line which your stud- 
ies have followed since you quitted Eton, we 
should be the wiser for your experience. 
Have gymnastic exercises hardened you, as 
Plato said they did, when pursued excess- 
ively? and do you need the musical studies 
which he both valued and dreaded as the most 
powerful of softening influences? If you have 
energy enough to lead both lives, pray how 
do you find the time? 

As to Plato's musical influence, you invite 



14 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

it, and yet you treacherously elude its pow- 
er. After being out all day in the pursuit 
of sylvan pleasures (if shooting on treeless 
wastes can be called a sylvan pleasure), you 
come home at nightfall ravenous. Then you 
do ample justice to your dinner, and having 
satisfied your faim de chasseur, you go into 
the drawing-room, and ask your wife to play 
and sing to you. If Plato could witness that 
pretty scene, he would approve your obedi- 
ence to his counsels. He would behold an 
athletic Englishman stretching his mighty 
limbs on a couch of soft repose, and letting 
his soul grow tender as his ears drank ravish- 
ing harmonies. If, however, the ancient 
sage, delighted with so sweet a picture of 
strength refined by song, were to dwell upon 
the sight as I have done, he would perceive 
too soon that, although your body was pres- 
ent indeed, your soul had become deaf in 
sleep's oblivion. So it happens to you night 
after night, and the music reaches you no 
more than the songs of choristers reach the 
dead in the graves below. 

And the elevating influences of literature? 
You have books, of course, in abundance. 
There is a library, amongst other luxuries of 
your home. But the literature your intellect 
feeds upon is in the columns of the Field, 
your newspaper. Yet this neglect of the 
means of culture is not due to any natural 
feebleness of the mind. Your brain, by its na- 
ture, is as vigorous as your vigorous body. 
It is sleep, and weariness, and the great neces- 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 15 

sary business of digestion, that drown your 
intellectual energies. The work of repairing 
so great a destruction of muscle is nature's 
chief concern. Since you became the mighty 
hunter that you are, the wear and tear have 
been enormous, and the necessary rapidity of 
reconstruction has absorbed your rich vi- 
tality. 

I will not question the wisdom of your 
choice, . if there has been any deliberate 
choice, though perhaps the life of action that 
you lead may have grown rather out ot cir- 
cumstances determining habit than from any 
conscious resolution. Health is so much 
more necessary to happiness than culture, 
that few who could choose between them 
would sacrifice it for learning, unless they 
were impelled by irresistible instincts. And 
beyond the great delight of health and 
strength there is a restlessness in men born to 
be active which must have its outlet in activ- 
ity. I knew a brave Italian who had fol- 
lowed Garibaldi in all his romantic enter- 
prises, who had suffered from privation and 
from wounds, who had not only faced death 
in the wildest adventures, but, what is even 
more terrible to the active temperament, had 
risked health from frequent exposure; and 
when I asked him whether it was affection to 
his famous chief, or faith in a political creed, 
or some more personal motive that had led 
him to this scorn of prudence, he answered 
that, after honest self-examination, he be- 
lieved the most powerful motive to be the 



46 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

passion for an active life. The active tem- 
perament likes physical action for its own 
sake, and not as a means of health. Activity 
renews itself and claims larger and larger 
satisfaction, till at last the habit of it absorbs 
the whole energy of the man. 

Although such a life as yours would be in- 
compatible with the work I have to do, it 
would be an unmixed benefit to me to take a 
greater interest in exercise. If you could 
but communicate that interest, how willingly 
would I become your pupil ! The fatal law of 
the studious temperament is, that in exercise 
itself it must find some intellectual charm, so 
that Ave quit our books in the library only to 
go and read the infinite book of nature. We 
cannot go out in the country without inces- 
santly thinking about either botany, or geol- 
ogy, or landscape painting, and it is difficult 
for us to find a refuge from the importunate 
habit of, investigation. Sport is the only ref- 
uge, but the difficulty is to care about it suffi- 
ciently to avoid ennui. When you have not 
the natural instinct, how are you to supply 
its place by any make-believe excitement? 
There is no position in the world more weari- 
some than that of a man inwardly indifferent 
to the amusement in which he is trying to 
take part. You can watch for game with an 
invincible patience, for you have the natural 
instinct, but after the first ten minutes on the 
skirts of the wood I lay my gun down and be- 
gin to botanize. Last week a friendly neigh- 
bor invited me to a boar-hunt. The boar was 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 47 

supposed to be in the middle of a great im- 
penetrable plantation, and all I did during 
the whole morning was to sit in my saddle 
awaiting the exit of the beast, cantering from 
one point of the wood's circumference to an- 
other, as the cry of the dogs guided me. Was 
it pleasure? A true hunter would have found 
interest enough in expectation, but I felt like 
a man on a railway-platform who is waiting 
for a train that is late. 



LETTER V. 

TO A STUDENT WHO NEGLECTED BODILY EXER- 
CISE. 

Difficulty of conciliating the animal and the intellectual lives 
—Bodily activity sometimes preserved by an effort of the 
will— Necessity of faith in exercise — Incompatibility be- 
tween physical and intellectual living disappears in large 
spaces of time — Franklin's theory about concentration in 
exercise— Time an essential factor — Health of a rural 
postman — Pedestrian habits of Wordsworth — Pedestrian 
and equestrian habits of Sir Walter Scott — Goethe's wild 
delight in physical exercise — Alexander Humboldt com- 
bated early delicacy by exercise— Intellectual utilities of 
physical action. 

"We have done those things which we 
ought not to have done ; we have left undone 
those things which we ought to have done, 
and there is no health in us." 

How applicable, my dear brother, are these 
words which the Church, in her wisdom, has 
seen to be adapted to all sinners — how appli- 
cable, I say, are they to students most espe- 



48 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ciallyi They have quite a personal applica- 
bility to you and me. We have read all day 
long, and written till three o'clock in the 
morning; we have taken no exercise for 
weeks, and there is no health in us. The doc- 
tor scrutinizes our wearied eyes, and knows 
that our brains are weary. Little do we need 
his warnings, for does not Nature herself re- 
mind us of our disobedience, and tell us in 
language not to be misinterpreted, to amend 
the error of our ways? Our digestion is 
sluggish and imperfect ; we are as nervous as 
delicate ladies, and there is no health in 
us. 

How easy it is to follow one of the two 
lives — the animal or the intellectual! how 
difficult to conciliate the two ! In every one 
of us there exists an animal which might 
have been as vigorous as wolves and foxes, if 
it had been left to develop itself in freedom. 
But besides the animal, there existed also a 
mind, and the mental activity restrained the 
bodily activity, till at last there is a serious 
danger of putting an end to it altogether. 

I know two men, about fifty-five years old 
both of them, and both of them admirably ac- 
tive. They tell me that their bodily activity 
has been preserved by an effort of the will; 
that if they had not resolutely kept up the 
habit of using legs and arms in daily work or 
amusement their limbs would have stiffened 
into uselessness, and their constitutions would 
have been unable to bear the call of any sud- 
den emergency. One of them has four resi* 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 4<J 

dences in different parts of the same county, 
and yet he will not keep a carriage, but is a 
pedestrian terrible to his friends ; the other is 
at the head of a great business, and gives an 
example of physical activity to his work- 
people. Both have an absolute faith in habit- 
ual exercise ; and both affirm that if the habit 
were once broken they could never after- 
wards resume it. 

We need this faith in exercise — this firm 
conviction of its necessity — the sort of con- 
viction that makes a man go out in all weath- 
ers, and leave the most urgent intellectual 
labor for the mere discipline and hardening 
of the body. Few students possess this faith 
in its purity. It is hard to believe that we 
shall get any good from exercise proportion- 
ate to the sacrifice of time. 

The incompatibility between the physical 
and the intellectual lives is often very marked 
if you look at small spaces of time only ; but 
if you consider broader spaces, such as a 
lifetime, then the incompatibility is not so 
marked, and gives place to a manifest concili- 
ation. The brain is clearer in vigorous health 
than it can be in the gloom and misery of 
sickness ; and although health may last for a 
while without renewal from exercise, so that 
if you are working under pressure for a 
month the time given to exercise is so much 
deducted from the result, it is not so for the 
life's performance. Health sustained for 
many years is so useful to the realization of 
all considerable intellectual undertakings, 



50 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

that the sacrifice to the bodily well-being is 
the best of all possible investments. 

Franklin's theory about concentrating his 
exercise for the economy of time was founded 
upon a mistake. Violent exertion for minutes 
is not equivalent to moderate exercise for 
hours. The desire to concentrate good of va- 
rious kinds into the smallest possible space is 
one of the commonest of human wishes, but 
it is not encouraged by the broader economy 
of nature. In the exercise of the mind every 
teacher is well aware that time is an essential 
factor. It is necessary to live with a study 
for hundreds or thousands of hours before 
the mind can assimilate as much of the sub- 
ject as it may need ; and so it is necessary to 
live in exercise during a thousand hours of 
every year to make sure of the physical bene- 
fits. Even the fresh air itself requires time 
to renovate our blood. The fresh air cannot 
be concentrated ; and to breathe the prodig- 
ious quantities of it which are needed for per- 
fect energy, we must be out in it frequently 
and long. 

The inhabitants of great cities have recourse 
to gymnastics as a substitute for the sports of 
the country. These exercises have one ad- 
vantage — they can be directed scientifically 
so as to strengthen the limbs that need devel- 
opment ; but no city gymnasium can offer the 
invigorating breezes of the mountain. We 
require not only exercise but exposure — daily 
exposure to the health-giving inclemencies of 
the weather. The postman who brings my 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 51 

letters walks eight thousand miles a year, and 
enjoys the most perfect regularity of health. 
There are operatives in factories who go 
through quite as much bodily exertion, but 
they have not his fine condition. He is as 
merry as a lark, and announces himself every 
morning like a bearer of joyful tidings. 
What the postman does from necessity an old 
gentleman did as regularly, though more mod- 
erately, for the preservation of his health and 
faculties. He went out every day ; and as he 
never consulted the weather, so he never had 
to consult the physicians. 

Nothing in the habits of Wordsworth — that 
model of excellent habits — can be better as an 
example to men of letters than his love of 
pedestrian excursions. Wherever he hap- 
pened to be, he explored the whole neighbor- 
hood on foot, looking into every nook and 
cranny of it ; and not merely the immediate 
neighborhood, but extended tracts of country i 
and in this way he met with much of his best 
material. Scott was both a pedestrian and an 
equestrian traveller, having often, as he tells 
us, walked thirty miles or ridden a hundred 
in those rich and beautiful districts which af- 
terwards proved to him such a mine of liter- 
ary wealth. Goethe took a wild delight in all 
sorts of physical exercise — swimming in the 
Hm by moonlight, skating with the merry 
little Weimar court on the Schwansee, riding 
about the country on horseback, and becom- 
ing at times quite outrageous -in the rich exu- 
berance of his energy, Alexander Humboldt 



52 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

was delicate in his youth, but the longing for 
great enterprises made him dread the hin- 
drances of physical insufficiency, so he accus- 
tomed his body to exercise and fatigue, and 
prepared himself for those wonderful explor- 
ations which opened his great career. Here 
are intellectual lives which were forwarded in 
their special aims by habits of physical exer- 
cise ; and, in an earlier age, have we not also 
the example of the greatest intellect of a great 
epoch, the astonishing Leonardo da Vinci, 
who took such a delight in horsemanship that 
although, as Vasari tells us, poverty visited 
him often, he never could sell his horses or 
dismiss his grooms? 

The physical and intellectual lives are not 
incompatible. I may go farther, and affirm 
that the physical activity of men eminent in 
literature has added abundance to their mate- 
rial and energy to their style ; that the activ- 
ity of scientific men has led them to innumer- 
able discoveries; and that even the more 
sensitive and contemplative study of the fine 
arts has been carried to a higher perfection by 
artists who painted action in which they had 
had their part, or natural beauty, which they 
had travelled far to see. Even philosophy 
itself owes much to mere physical courage 
and endurance. How much that is noblest 
in ancient thinking may be due to the hardy 
health of Socrates ! 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 03 

LETTER VI. 

TO AN AUTHOR IN MORTAL DISEASE. 

Considering death as a certainty— The wisdom learned from 
suffering— Employment of happier intervals— The teach- 
ing of the diseased not to be rejected — Their double expe- 
rience—Ignorance of Nature's spoiled children — Benefit 
of disinterested thought— Reasons for pursuing intellect- 
ual labors to the last— Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire. 

When Alexandre Bixio lay on his death-bed, 
his friend Labrousse visited him, and ex- 
claimed on entering the room, "How well 
you are looking to-day ! " To this, Bixio, who 
was clearly aware of his condition, answered 
in these words: — "Voyons, mon pauvre La- 
brousse ; tu viens voir un homme qui n'a plus 
quim quart d'heure a vivre, et tu veux lui 
faire croire qu'il a bonne mine; allons, une 
poignee de main, cela vaut mieux pour un 
homme que tous ces petits mensonges-la. " 

I will vex you with none of ohese well- 
meant but wearisome little falsehoods. We 
both of us know your state; we both know 
that your malady, though it may be allevia- 
ted, can never be cured; and that the fatal 
termination of it, though delayed by all the 
artifices of science, will certainly arrive at 
last. The cheerful courage which enables you 
to look this certainty in the face has also ena- 
bled you to extract from years of suffering 
that prof oundest wisdom which (as one of the 
wisest of living Englishmen has told us) can 
be learned from suffering alone. The admira- 



54 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ble elasticity of your intellectual and moral 
nature has enabled you, in the intervals of 
physical uneasiness or pain, to cast aside 
every morbid thought, to enter quite fully and 
heartily into the healthy life of others, and to 
enjoy the magnificent spectacle of the uni- 
verse with contented submission to its laws — 
those beneficent yet relentless laws which to 
you bring debility and death. You have con- 
tinued to write notwithstanding the progress 
of your malady ; and yet, since it has so piti- 
lessly held you, there is no other change in 
the spirit of your compositions than the deep- 
ening of a graver beauty, the addition of a 
sweeter seriousness. Not one sentence that 
you have written betrays either the injustice 
of the invalid, or his irritability. Your mind 
is not clouded by any mist from the fever 
marshes, but its sympathies are far more ac- 
tive than they were. Your pain has taught 
you a tender pity for all the pain that is out- 
Side of you, and a patient gentleness which 
was wanting to your nature in its days of bar- 
barian health. 

Surely it would be a lamentable error if 
mankind were to carry out the recommenda- 
tion of certain ruthless philosophers, and re- 
ject the help and teaching of the diseased. 
Without undervaluing the *robust perform- 
ance of healthy natures, and without encom* 
aging literature that is morbid, that is fev- 
ered, impatient, and perverse, we may still 
prize the noble teaching which is the testa- 
ment of sufferers to the world. The diseased 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 55 

have a peculiar and mysterious experience; 
they have known the sensations of health, and 
then, in addition to this knowledge, they have 
gained another knowledge which enables them 
to think more accurately even of health itself. 
A life without suffering would be like a pict- 
ure without shade. The pets of Nature, who 
do not know what suffering is, and cannot 
realize it, have always a certain rawness, like 
foolish landsmen who laugh at the terrors of 
the ocean, because they have neither experi- 
ence enough to know what those terrors are, 
nor brains enough to imagine them. 

You who are borne along, slowly but irresist- 
ibly, to that Niagara which plunges into the 
gulf of death, — you who, with perfect self-pos- 
session and heroic cheerfulness, are counting 
the last miles of the voyage, — find leisure to 
study and think as the boat glides onwards 
silently to the inevitable end. It is one of the 
happiest privileges of the high intellectual life 
that it can elevate us — at least in the intervals 
of relief from complete prostration or acute 
pain — to regions of disinterested thought, 
where all personal anxieties are forgotten. 
To feel that he is still able, even in days of 
physical weakness and decline, to add some- 
thing to the world's inheritance of knowledge, 
or to bequeath to it some new and noble 
thought in the pearl of complete expression, 
is a profound satisfaction to the active mind 
that is lodged in a perishing body. Many 
diseases fortunately permit this activity to 
the last ; and I do not hesitate to affirm, that 



56 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the work done in the time of physical decline 
has in not a few instances been the most j)er- 
fect and the most permanently valuable. It 
is not accurately true that the mind and the 
body invariably fail together. Physicians 
who know how prevalent chronic diseases 
are, and how many eminent men are physi- 
cally inconvenienced by them, know also 
that minds of great spiritual energy possess 
the wonderful faculty of indefinitely improv- 
ing themselves whilst the body steadily de- 
teriorates. Nor is there anything irrational 
in this persistent improvement of the mind, 
even to the extremest limit of material decay ; 
for the mind of every intellectual human 
being is part and parcel of the great perma- 
nent mind of humanity ; and even if its in- 
fluence soon ceases to be traceable — if the 
spoken words are forgotten — if the written 
volume is not reprinted or even quoted, it 
has not worked in vain. The intellectual 
light of Europe in this century is not only 
due to great luminaries whom every one can 
name, but to millions of thoughtful persons, 
now utterly forgotten, who in their time 
loved the light, and guarded it, and increased 
it, and carried it into many lands, and be- 
queathed it as a sacred trust. He who la- 
bors only for his personal pleasure may well 
be discouraged by the shortness and uncer- 
tainty of life, and cease from his selfish toil 
on the first approaches of disease ; but who- 
ever has fully realized the grand continuity 
of intellectual tradition, and taken his own 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 57 

place in it between the future and the past, 
will work till he can work no more, and then 
gaze hopefully on the world's great future, 
like Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire, when his blind 
eyes beheld the future of zoology. 



LETTER VII. 

TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHO 
HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE. 

A domestic picture— Thoughts suggested by it— Importance 
of the senses in intellectual pursuits — Importance of 
hearing to Madame de Stael — Importance of seeing to Mr. 
Ruskin — Mr. Prescott, the historian — How blindness re- 
tarded his work— Value of all the five senses— Self -govern- 
ment indispensable to their perfection— Great value of 
longevity to the intellectual life. 

It is always a great pleasure to me to pass 
an evening at your father's house ; but on the 
last occasion that pleasure was very much 
enhanced because you were once more with 
us. I watched your mother's eyes as she sat 
in her place in the drawing-room. They fol- 
lowed you almost without ceasing, and there 
was the sweetest, happiest expression on her 
dear face, that betrayed her tender maternal 
love for you and her legitimate maternal 
pride. Your father was equally happy in his 
own way ; he was much more gay and talkative 
than I have seen him for two or three anxious 
years; he told amusing stories; he entered 
playfully into the jests of others; he had 
pleasant projects for the future, and spoka 



58 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of them with facetious exaggeration. I sat 
quietly in my corner, slyly observing my old 
friends, and amusing myself by discovering 
(it did not need much perspicacity for that) 
the hidden sources of the happiness that was 
so clearly visible. They were gladdened by 
the first successes of your manhood ; by the 
evidence of your strength ; by the realization 
of hopes long cherished. 

Watching this charming picture with a 
perfect sympathy, I began to have certain 
thoughts of my own which it is my present 
purpose to communicate to you without dis- 
guise. I thought, first, how agreeable it was 
to be the spectator of so pretty a picture ; but 
then my eyes wandered to a painting that 
hung upon the walls, in which also there were 
a mother and her son, and this led me a long 
way. The painting was a hundred years old ; 
but although the colors were not quite so fresh 
as when they left the palette of the artist, the 
beautiful youth who stood radiant like a 
,young Apollo in the centre of the composition 
had not lost one of the great gifts with which 
his cunning human creator had endowed him. 
The fire of his eye had not been quenched by 
time; the bloom of his cheek still flushed 
with faint vermilion; his lip was full and 
imperious; his limbs athletic; his bearing 
haughty and dauntless. All life seemed 
spread before him like a beautiful rich estate 
of which every acre was his own. How easily 
will he conquer fame ! how easily kindle pas- 
sion. Who shall withstand this pink and per* 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS, 59 

fection of aristocracy — this ideal of the age 
of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature 
helped by all the inventions of art ? 

Then I thought farther: "That splendid 
young nobleman in the picture will look just 
as young as he does now when we shall be 
either superannuated or dead. " And I looked 
at you and your mother again and thought : 
4 k It is just five minutes since I saw these two 
living beings, and in this little space of time 
they have both of them aged a little, though 
no human observer has enough delicacy of 
perception to detect so inappreciable an alter- 
ation. " I went gradually on and on into the 
future, trying to imagine the changes which 
would come over yourself more especially (for 
it was you who were the centre of my rev- 
erie), till at last I imagined pretty accurately 
what you might be at sixty; but there it be- 
came necessary to stop, because it was too 
difficult to conceive the processes of decay. 

After this, one thought grew upon me and 
became dominant. I thought, at present he 
has all the senses in their perfection, and they 
serve him without a hitch. He is an intelli- 
gence served by organs, and the organs are 
all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman 
who brings letters. When the postman be- 
comes too infirm to do his work he will retire 
on his little pension, and another will take his 
place and bring the letters just as regularly ; 
but when the human organs become infirm 
they cannot be taken out and replaced by 
new ones, so that we must content ourselves^ 



GO TEE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

to the end, with their service, such as it may 
be. Then I reflected how useful the senses 
are to the high intellectual life, and how wise 
it is, even for intellectual purposes, to pre- 
serve them as long as possible in their perfec- 
tion. 

To be able to see and hear well — to feel 
healthy sensations — even to taste and smell 
properly, are most important qualifications 
for the pursuit of literature, and art, and 
science. If you read attentively the work of 
any truly illustrious poet, you will find that 
the whole of the imagery which gives power 
and splendor to his verse is derived from na- 
ture through one or other of these ordinary 
channels. Some philosophers have gone much 
farther than this, and have affirmed that the 
entire intellectual life is based ultimately upon 
remembered physical sensations; that we 
have no mental conception that is really inde- 
pendent of sensuous experience ; and that the 
most abstract thought is only removed from 
sensation by successive processes of substitu- 
tion, I have not space to enter into so great 
and mysterious a subject as this ; but I desire 
to draw your attention to a truth very com- 
monly overlooked by intellectual people, 
which is the enormous importance of the 
organs of sense in the highest intellectual 
pursuits, I will couple together two names 
which have owed their celebrity, one chiefly 
to the use of her ears, the other to the use of 
his eyes. Madame de Stael obtained her lit- 
erary material almost exclusively by means 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 61 

of conversation. She directed, systematic- 
ally, the talk of the learned and brilliant 
men amongst whom she lived to the subject 
which for the moment happened to occupy 
her thoughts. Her literary process (which is 
known to us in detail through the revelations 
of her friends) was purposely invented to 
catch everything that she heard, as a net 
catches fish in a river. First, she threw down 
on paper a very brief rough draft of the in- 
tended literary project. This she showed to 
few, but from it she made a second "state " 
(as an engraver would say), which she exhib- 
ited to some of her trusted friends, profiting 
by their hints and suggestions. Her secre- 
tary copied the corrected manuscript, incor- 
porating the new matter, on paper with a 
very broad margin for farther additions. 
During all the time that it took to carry her 
work through these successive states, that in- 
genious woman made the best possible use of 
her ears, which were her natural providers. 
She made everybody talk who was likely to be 
of any use to her, and then immediately added 
what she had caught on the wide margin re- 
served for that purpose. She used her eyes 
so little that she might almost as well have 
been blind. We have it on her own author- 
ity, that were it not out of respect to custom, 
she would not open her window to see the 
Bay of Naples for the first time, whereas she 
would travel five hundred leagues to talk with 
a clever man whom she had never met. 
Now since Madame de Stael's genius fed it- 



62 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

self exclusively through the faculty of hear« 
ing, what an enormous difference it would 
have made to her if she had been deaf ! It is 
probable that the whole of her literary repu- 
tation was dependent on the condition of her 
ears. Even a very moderate degree of deaf- 
ness (just enough to make listening irk- 
some) might have kept her in perpetual ob- 
scurity. 

The next instance I intend to give is that of 
a distinguished contemporary, Mr. Euskin. 
His peculiar position in literature is due to his 
being able to see as cultivated artists see. 
Everything that is best and most original in 
his writings is invariably either an account of 
what he has seen in his own independent in- 
imitable way, or else a criticism of the accu- 
rate or defective sight of others. His meth- 
od of study, by drawing and taking written 
memoranda of what he has seen, is entirely 
different from Madame de Stael's method, but 
refers always, as hers did, to the testimony 
of the predominant sense. Every one whose 
attention has been attracted to the subject is 
aware that, amongst people who are com- 
monly supposed to see equally well, and who 
are not suspected of any tendency to blind- 
ness, the degrees of perfection in this sense 
vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Euskin 
(to our great misfortune) had been endowed 
with no better eyes than many persons who 
see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his en- 
joyment and use of sight would have been so 
much diminished that he would have had lit 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 63 

tie enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind 
of enthusiasm was quite essential to his work. 

The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, 
the historian, is no doubt a striking proof 
what may be accomplished by a man of re- 
markable intellectual ability without the help 
of sight, or rather helped by the sight of 
others. We have also heard of a blind trav- 
eller, and even of a blind entomologist ; but in 
all cases of this kind they are executive diffi- 
culties to be overcome, such that only the 
most resolute natures would ever dream of 
encountering them. When the materials for 
the "Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella " ar- 
rived in Prescott's house from Europe, his 
remaining eye had just suffered from over- 
exertion to such a degree that he could not 
use it again for years. ' ' I well remember, " 
he wrote in a letter to a friend, u the blank 
despair which I felt when my literary treas- 
ures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth 
lying around me which I was forbidden to 
explore." And although, by a most tedious 
process, which would have worn out the pa- 
tience of any other author, Mr. Prescott did 
at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it 
cost him ten years of labor — probably thrice 
as much time as would have been needed by 
an author of equal intellectual ability without 
any infirmity of sight. 

Although, of the five senses which God has 
given us, sight and hearing are the most nec- 
essary to the intellectual life, it may easily 
be demonstrated that the lower ones are not 



04 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

without their intellectual uses. Perfect liter- 
ature and art can only be produced by men 
who are perfect in all their natural faculties. 
The great creative intellects have never been 
ascetics ; they have been rightly and healthily 
sensitive to every kind of pleasure. The taste 
of fruits and wines, the perfume of flowers are 
a part of the means by which the spirit of; 
Nature influences our most secret thoughts, 
and conveys to us suggestions, or carries us 
into states of feeling which have an enormous 
effect upon our thinking, though the manner 
in which the effect is produced is one of the 
deepest mysteries of our mysterious being. 
When the Caliph Vathek added five wings to 
the palace of Alkoremmi, on the hill of Pied 
Horses, for the particular gratification of 
each of his five senses, he only did on a use- 
lessly large scale what every properly-en- 
dowed human being does, when he can afford 
it, on a small one. 

You will not suspect me of preaching un- 
limited indulgence. The very object of this 
letter is to recommend, for intellectual pur- 
poses, the careful preservation of the senses 
in the freshness of their perfection, and this 
is altogether incompatible with every species 
of excess. If you are to see clearly all your 
life, you must not sacrifice eyesight by over- 
straining it ; and the same law of moderation 
is the condition of preserving every other 
faculty. I want you to know the exquisite 
taste of common dry bread ; to enjoy the per- 
fume of a larch wood at a distance; to feel 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS. 65 

delight when a sea-wave clashes over you. I 
want your eye to be so sensitive that it shall 
discern the faintest tones of a gray cloud, and 
yet so strong that it shall bear to gaze on a 
white one in the dazzling glory of sunshine. 
I would have your hearing sharp enough to 
detect the music of the spheres, if it were but 
audible, and yet your nervous system robust 
enough to endure the shock of the guns on an 
ironclad. To have and keep these powers we 
need a firmness of self-government that is rare. 
Young men are careless of longevity ; but 
how precious are added years to the fulness 
of the intellectual life ! There are lives, such 
as that of Major Pendennis, which only dimin- 
ish in value as they advance — when the man 
of fashion is no longer fashionable, and the 
sportsman can no longer stride over the 
ploughed fields. The old age of the Major 
Pendennises is assuredly not to be envied: 
but how rich is the age of the Hunboldts ! I 
compare the life of the intellectual to a long 
wedge of gold — the thin end of it begins at 
birth, and the depth and value of it go on in- 
definitely increasing till at last comes Death (a 
personage for whom Nathaniel Hawthorne 
had a peculiar dislike, for his unmannerly 
habit of interruption), who stops the aurifer- 
ous processes. Oh, the mystery of the name- 
less ones who have died when the wedge was 
thin and looked so poor and light! Oh, the 
happiness of the fortunate old men whose 
thoughts went deeper and deeper like a wail 
that runs out into the sea ! 



66 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Note — One of the most painful cases of interruption caused 
by death is that of Cuvier. His paralysis came upon him 
whilst he was still in full activity, and death prevented him 
from arranging a great accumulation of scientific material. 
He said to M. Pasquier, "I had great things still to do; all 
was ready in my head. After thirty years of labor and re- 
search, there remained but to write, and now the hands fail, 
and carry with them the head." But the most lamentable in- 
stances of this kind of interruption are, from the nature of 
things, unknown to us. Even the friends of the deceased 
cannot estimate the extent of the loss, for a man's immediate 
neighbors are generally the very last persons to become 
aware of the nature of his powers or the value of his acquire- 
ment*. 



PART II. 

THE MORAL BASIS. 



LETTER I. 

TO A MORALIST WHO HAD SAID THAT THERE 
WAS A WANT OF MORAL FIBRE IN THE IN- 
TELLECTUAL, ESPECIALLY IN POETS AND 
ARTISTS. 

The love of intellectual pleasure— The seeking for a stimulus 
—Intoxication of poetry and oratory— Other mental in- 
toxications—The Bishop of Exeter on drudgery— The labor 
of composition in poetry—Wordsworth's dread of it- 
Moore- -His trouble with u Lalla Rookh ,, — His painstak- 
ing in preparation — Necessity of patient industry in other 
arts— John Lewis, Meissonier, Mulready— Drudgery in 
struggling against technical difficulties — Water-color 
painting, etching, oil-painting, fresco, line-engraving — 
Labor undergone for mere discipline — Moral strength of 
students— Giordano Bruno. 

You told me the other day that you believed 
the inducement to what I called intellectual 
living to be merely the love of pleasure—* 
pleasure of a higher kind, no doubt, than 
that which we derive from wine, yet fairly 
• comparable to it. You went on to say that 
you could not, from the moral point of view, 
discern any appreciable difference between 
intoxicating oneself by means of literature or 
art and getting tipsy on port wine or brandy ; 



* 08 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

that the reading of poetry, most especially, 
was clearly self -intoxication — a service of Ve- 
nus and Bacchus, in which the suggestions of 
artfully-ordered words were used as substi- 
tutes for the harem and the wine-flask. Com- 
pleting the expression of this idea, you said 
that the excitement produced by oratory was 
exactly of the same nature as the excitement 
produced by gin, so that Mr. Bright and M. 
Gambetta — nay, even a gentleman so respect- 
able as the late Lord Derby — belonged strictly 
to the same profession as the publicans, being 
dealers in stimulants, and no more. The 
habitual student was, in your view, nothing 
better than the helpless victim of unresisted 
appetite, to whom intellectual intoxication, 
having been at first a pleasure, had finally 
become a necessity. You added that any ra- 
tional person who found himself sinking into 
such a deplorable condition as this, would 
have recourse to some severe discipline as a 
preservative — a discipline requiring close at- 
tention to common things, and rigorously ex- 
cluding every variety of thought which could 
possibly be considered intellectual. 

It is strictly true that the three intellectual 
pursuits — literature, science, and the fine arts 
— are all of them strong stimulants, and that 
men are attracted to them by the stimulus 
they give. But these occupations are morally 
much nearer to the common level of other oc- 
cupations than you suppose. There is no 
doubt a certain intoxication in poetry and 
painting ; but I have seen a tradesman find a 



THE MO HAL BASIS. G9ft 

fully equivalent intoxication in an addition 
of figures showing a delightful balance at his 
banker's. I have seen a young poet intoxicat- 
ed with the love of poetry; but I have also 
seen a young mechanical genius on whom the 
sight of a locomotive acted exactly like a bot- 
tle of champagne. Everything that is capa- 
ble of exciting or moving man, everything 
that fires him with enthusiasm, everything 
that sustains his energies above the dead 
level of merely animal existence, may be 
compared, and not very untruly, to the action 
of generous wine. The two most powerful 
mental stimulants — since they overcome even 
the fear of death — are unquestionably re- 
ligion and patriotism : ardent states of feeling 
both of them when they are genuine ; yet this 
ardor has a great utility. It enables men to 
bear much, to perform much which would be 
beyond their natural force if it were not sus- 
tained by powerful mental stimulants. And 
so it is in the intellectual life. It is because 
its labors are so severe that its pleasures are 
so glorious. The Creator of intellectual man 
set him the most arduous tasks — tasks that re- 
quired the utmost possible patience, courage, 
self -discipline, and which at the same time 
were for the most part, from their very na- 
ture, likely to receive only the most meagre 
and precarious pecuniary reward. There- 
fore, in order that so poor and weak a creat- 
ure might execute its gigantic works with 
the energy necessary to their permanence, 
the labor itself was made intensely attractive 



^0 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and interesting to the few who were fitted for 
it by their constitution. Since their courage 
could not be maintained by any of the com- 
mon motives which carry men through or- 
dinary drudgery — since neither wealth nor 
worldly position was in their prospects, the 
drudgery they had to go through was to be 
rewarded by the triumphs of scientific discov- 
ery, by the felicities of artistic expression. A 
divine drunkenness was given to them for 
their encouragement, surpassing the gift of 
the grape. 

But now that I have acknowledged, not un- 
gratefully, the necessity of that noble excite- 
ment which is the life of life, it is time for me 
to add that, in the daily labor of all intellectual 
workers, much has to be done which requires 
a robustness of the moral constitution beyond 
what you appear to be aware of. It is not 
long since the present Bishop of Exeter truly 
affirmed, in an address to a body of students, 
that if there were not weariness in work, that 
work was not so thorough-going as it ought 
to be. ' ' Of all work, " the Bishop said, « ' that 
produces results, nine-tenths must be drudg- 
ery. There is no work, from the highest to 
the lowest, which can be done well by any 
man who is unwilling to make that sacrifice. 
Part of the very nobility of the devotion of 
the true workman to his work consists in the 
fact that a man is not daunted by finding 
that drudgery must be done; and no man 
can really succeed in any walk of life with 
out a good deal of what in ordinary English 



THE MORAL BASIS. It 

is called pluck. That is the condition of all 
work whatever, and it is the condition of all 
success. And there is nothing which so truly 
repays itself as this very perseverance against 
weariness." 

You understand, no doubt, that there is 
drudgery in the work of a lawyer or an ac- 
countant, but you imagine that there is no 
drudgery in that of an artist, or author, or 
man of science. In these cases you fancy 
that there is nothing but a pleasant intoxica- 
tion, like the puffing of tobacco or the sipping 
of claret after dinner. The Bishop sees more 
accurately. He knows that "of all work 
that produces results nine-tenths must be 
drudgery." He makes no exceptions in favor 
of the arts and sciences ; if he had made any 
such exceptions, they would have proved the 
absence of culture in himself. Eeal work of 
all descriptions, even including the composi- 
tion of poetry (the most intoxicating of all 
human pursuits), contains drudgery in so 
large a proportion that considerable moral 
courage is necessary to carry it to a success- 
ful issue. Some of the most popular writers 
of verse have dreaded the labor of composi- 
tion. Wordsworth shrank from it much 
more sensitively than he did from his prosaic 
labors as a distributor of stamps. He had 
that horreur de la plume which is a frequent 
malady amongst literary men. But we feel, in 
reading Wordsworth, that composition was a 
serious toil to him — the drudgery is often 
visible. Let me take, then, the case of a 



f2 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

writer of verse distinguished especially for 
fluency and ease— the lightest, gayest, appar- 
ently most thoughtless of modern minstrels — 
the author of tw The Irish Melodies" and 
"Lalla Kookh." Moore said — I quote from 
memory and may not give the precise words, 
but they were to this effect — that although 
the first shadowy imagining of a new poem 
was a delicious fooFs paradise, the labor of 
actual composition was something altogether 
different. He did not, I believe, exactly use 
the word " drudgery," but his expression im- 
plied that there w^as painful drudgery in the 
work. When he began to write ' ' Lalla 
Rookh " the task was anything but easy to 
him. He said that he was ' ' at all times a far 
more slow and painstaking workman than 
would ever be guessed from the result. " For 
a long time after the conclusion of the agree- 
ment with Messrs. Longman, ' ' though gener- 
ally at work with a view to this task, he made 
but very little real progress in it." After 
many unsatisfactory attempts, finding that 
his subjects were so slow in kindling his own 
sympathies, he began to despair of their ever 
touching the hearts of others. " Had this se- 
ries of disheartening experiments been carried 
on much further, I must have thrown aside 
the work in despair." He took the greatest 
pains in long and laboriously preparing him- 
self by reading. " To form a storehouse, as 
it were, of illustrations purely Oriental, and 
so familiarize myself with its various treas- 
ures that, quick as Fancy required the aid of 



THE MORAL BASIS. 78 

fact in her spiritings, the memory was ready 
to furnish materials for the spell-work ; such 
was, for a long while, the sole object of my 
studies. " After quoting some opinions favor- 
able to the truth of his Oriental coloring, he 
says: " Whatever of vanity there may be in 
citing suck tributes, they show, at least, of 
what great value, even in poetry, is that pro- 
saic quality, industry, since it was in a slow 
and laborious collection of small facts that the 
first foundations of this fanciful romance 
were laid." 

Other fine arts make equally large claims 
upon the industry of their professors. We 
see the charming result, which looks as if it 
were nothing but pleasure — the mere sensu- 
ous gratification of an appetite for melody or 
color; but no one ever eminently succeeded 
in music or painting without patient submis- 
sion to a discipline far from attractive or en- 
tertaining. An idea was very prevalent 
amongst the upper classes in England, be- 
tween twenty and thirty years ago, that art 
was not a serious pursuit, and that French- 
men were too frivolous to apply themselves 
seriously to anything. When, however, the 
different schools of art in Europe came to be 
exhibited together, the truth began to dawn 
upon people's minds that the French and 
Belgian schools of painting had a certain su- 
periority over the rest — a superiority of quite 
a peculiar sort ; and when the critics applied 
themselves to discover the hidden causes of 
this generally perceived superiority, they 



74 THE INTELLECTUAL LIVE. 

found out that it was due in great measure to 
the patient drudgery submitted to by those 
foreign artists in their youth. English paint- 
ers who have attained distinction have gone 
through a like drudgery, if not in the public 
atelier at least in secrecy and solitude. Mr. 
John Lewis, in reply to an application for a 
drawing to be reproduced by the autotype- 
process, and published in the Portfolio, said 
that his sketches and studies were all in 
color, but if we liked to examine them we 
were welcome to select anything that might 
be successfully photographed. Not being in 
London at the time, I charged an experienced 
friend to go and see if there were anything 
that would answer our purpose. Soon after- 
ward he wrote : " I have just been to see John 
Lewis, and have come away astounded" He 
had seen the vast foundations of private in- 
dustry on which the artist's public work had 
been erected, — innumerable studies in color, 
wrought with the most perfect care and fin- 
ish, and all for self -education merely, not for 
any direct reward in fame. We have all ad- 
mired the extraordinary power of representa- 
tion in the little pictures of Meissonier ; that 
power was acquired by painting studies life- 
size for self-instruction, and the artist has 
sustained his knowledge by persistence in that 
practice. Mulready, between the conception 
of a new picture and the execution of it, used 
to give himself a special training for the in- 
tended work by painting a study in color of 
every separate thing that was to form part 



THE MO UAL BASIS. 75 

of the composition. It is useless to go on 
multiplying these examples, since all great 
artists, without exception, have been distill 
guished for their firm faith in steady well-di- 
rected labor. This faith was so strong in Rey- 
nolds that it limited his reasoning powers, and 
prevented him from assigning their due im- 
portance to the inborn natural gifts. 

Not only in their preparations for work. 
but even in the work itself, do artists under- 
go drudgery. It is the peculiarity of their 
work that, more than any other human work, 
it displays whatever there may be in it of 
pleasure and felicity, putting the drudgery as 
much out of sight as possib]e: but all who 
know the secrets of the studio are aware of 
the ceaseless struggles against technical dif- 
ficulty which are the price of the charms that 
pleasantly deceive us. The amateur tries to 
paint in water-color, and finds that the gra- 
dation of his sky will not come right : instead 
of being a sound gradation like that of the 
heavenly blue, it is all in spots and patches. 
Then he goes to some clever artist who seems 
to get the right thing with enviable ease. ' ' Is 
my paper good? have my colors been prop- 
erly ground V The materials are sound 
enough, but the artist confesses one of the 
discouraging little secrets of his craft. " The 
fact is," he says, "those spots that you com- 
plain of happen to all of us, and very trouble- 
some they are, especially in dark tints ; the 
only way is to remove them as patiently as 
we can, and it sometime© takes several da vs. 



76 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

If one or two of them remain in spite of us, 
we turn them into birds." In etching, the 
most famous practitioners get into messes 
with the treacherous chemistry of their acids, 
and need an invincible patience. Even Mer- 
yon was always very anxious when the time 
came for confiding his work to what he called 
the traitresse liqueur; and whenever I give a 
commission to an etcher, I am always expect- 
ing some such despatch as the following: 
" Plate utterly ruined in the biting. Very 
sorry. Will begin another immediately." 
We know what a dreadful series of mishaps 
attended our fresco-painters at Westminster, 
and now even the promising water-glass proc- 
ess, in which Maclise trusted, shows the 
bloom of premature decay. The safest and 
best known of modern processes, simple oil- 
painting has its own dangers also. The colors 
sink and alter ; they lose their relative values ; 
they lose their pearly purity, their glowing 
transparence — they turn to buff and black. 
The fine arts bristle all over with technical 
difficulties, and are, I will not say the best 
school of patience in the world, for many 
other pursuits are also very good schools of 
patience; but I will say, without much fear 
of contradiction from anybody acquainted 
w^ith the subject, that the fine arts offer 
drudgery enough, and disappointment enough, 
to be a training both in patience and in hu- 
mility. 

In the labor of the line-engraver both these 
qualities are developed to the pitch of perfect 



THE MORAL BASIS, 71 

heroism. He sits down to a great surface of 
steel or copper, and day by day, week after 
week, month after month, ploughs slowly his 
marvellous lines. Sometimes the picture be- 
fore him is an agreeable companion ; he is in 
sympathy with the painter; he enjoys every 
touch that he has to translate. But some- 
times, on the contrary, he hates the picture, 
and engraves it as a professional duty. I 
happened to call upon a distinguished English 
engraver — a man of the greatest taste and 
knowledge, a refined and cultivated critic — 
and I found him seated at work before a 
thing which had nothing to do with fine art 
— a medley of ugly portraits of temperance 
celebrities on a platform. "At! " he said to 
me sadly, "you see the dark side of our pro- 
fession ; fancy sitting down to a desk all day 
long for two years together with that thing 
to occupy your thoughts ! " How much mor- 
al fibre was needed to carry to a successful 
issue so repulsive a task as that ! You may 
answer that a stone-breaker on the roadside 
surpasses my line-engraver both in patience 
and in humility; but whereas the sensitive- 
ness of the stone-breaker has been deadened 
by his mode of life, the sensitiveness of the 
engraver has been continually fostered and 
increased. An ugly picture was torture to 
his cultivated eye, and he had to bear the 
torture all day long, like the pain of an irrita- 
ting disease. 

Still even the line-engraver has secret 
sources of entertainment to relieve the mor- 



78 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

tal tedium of his task-work. The picture 
may be hideous, but the engraver has hidden 
consolations in the exercise of his wonderful 
art. He can at least entertain himself with 
feats of interpretative skill, with the gentle 
treacheries of improving here and there upon 
the hatefulness of the intolerable original. 
He may congratulate himself in the evening, 
that one more frightful hat or coat has been 
got rid of ; that the tiresome task has been re- 
duced by a space measurable in eights of an 
inch. The heaviest work which shows prog- 
ress is not without one element of cheerful- 
ness. 

There is a great deal of intellectual labor, 
undergone simply for discipline, which shows 
no present result that is appreciable, and 
which therefore requires, in addition to pa- 
tience and humility, one of the noblest of the 
moral virtues, faith. Of all the toils in which 
men engage, none are nobler in their origin 
or their aim than those by which they en- 
deavor to become more wise. Pray observe 
that whenever the desire for greater wisdom 
is earnest enough to sustain men in these 
high endeavors, there must be both humility 
and faith — the humility which acknowledges 
present insufficiency, the faith that relies 
upon the mysterious laws which govern our 
intellectual being. Be sure that there has 
been great moral strength in all who have 
come to intellectual greatness. During some 
brief moments of insight the mist has rolled 
away, and they have beheld, like a celestial 



THE MORAL BASIS. 78 

city, the home of their highest aspirations; 
but the cloud has gathered round them again, 
and still in the gloom they have gone steadily 
forwards, stumbling often, yet maintaining 
their unconquerable resolution. It is to this 
sublime persistence of the intellectual in other 
ages that the world owes the treasures which 
they won ; it is by a like persistence that we 
may hope to hand them down, augmented, 
to the future. Their intellectual purposes did 
not weaken their moral nature, but exercised 
and exalted it. All that was best and high- 
est in the imperfect moral nature of Giordano 
Bruno had its source in that noble passion for 
Philosophy, which made him declare that for 
her sake it was easy to endure labor and pain 
and exile, since he had found ' ' in brevi labore 
diuturnam requiem, in levi dolore immensum 
gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplis- 
simam." 



80 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER II. 

TO AN UNDISCIPLINED WRITER. 

Early Motility of great workers— External discipline only 
a substitute for inward discipline — Necessity for inward 
discipline — Origin of the idea of discipline — Authors pecul- 
iarly liable to overlook its uses — Good examples—Sir Ar- 
thur Helps — Sainte-Beuve— The central authority in the 
mind — Locke's opinion — Even the creative faculty may 
be commanded— Charles Baudelaire — Discipline in com- 
mon trades and professions — La wyers and surgeons — Hal- 
ler— Mental refusals not to be altogether disregarded— 
The idea of discipline the moral basis of the intellectual 
life— Alexander Humboldt. 

Sir Arthur Helps, in that wise book of his 
"Thoughts upon Government," says that 
' ' much of the best and greatest work in the 
world has been done by those who were any- 
thing but docile in their youth." He believes 
that * ' this bold statement applies not only to 
the greatest men in Science, Literature, and 
Art, but also to the greatest men in official 
life, in diplomacy, and in the general busi- 
ness of the world." 

Many of us who were remarkable for our 
indocility in boyhood, and remarkable for 
nothing eise, have found much consolation in 
this passage. It is most agreeable to be told, 
by a writer very eminent both for wisdom 
and for culture, that our untowardness was a 
hopeful sign. Another popular modern writ- 
er has also encouraged us by giving a long 
list of dunces who have become illustrious. 

Yet, however nattering it may be to find 
ourselves in such excellent company, at least 



THE MORAL BASIS. 81 

so far as the- earlier half of life may be con- 
cerned, we cannot quite forget the very nu- 
merous instances of distinguished persons 
who began by submitting to the discipline of 
school and college, and gained honors and 
reputation there, before encountering the 
competition of the world. 

The external discipline applied by school- 
masters is a substitute for that inward dis- 
cipline which we all so greatly need, and 
which is absolutely indispensable to culture. 
Whether a boy happens to be a dunce at 
school or a youth of brilliant promise, his 
future intellectual career will depend very 
much on his moral force. The distinguished 
men who derived so little benefit from early 
discipline have invariably subjected them- 
selves to a discipline of another kind which 
prepared them for the labor of their man- 
hood. It may be a pure assumption to say 
this, but the assumption is confirmed by 
every instance that is known to me. Many 
eminent men have undergone the discipline 
of business, many like Franklin have been 
self -disciplined, but I have never heard of a 
person who had risen to intellectual eminence 
without voluntary submission to an intellect- 
ual discipline of some kind. 

There are, no doubt, great pleasures at- 
tached to the intellectual life, and quite pe- 
culiar to it ; but these pleasures are the sup- 
port of discipline and not its negation. They 
give us the cheerfulness necessary for our 
work, but they do not excuse us from the 



82 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

work. They are like the cup of coffee served 
to a soldier on duty, not like the opium which 
incapacitates for everything but dreaming. 

I have been led into these observations by a 
perusal of the new book which you sent me. 
It has many qualities which in a young writer 
are full of promise. It is earnest, and lively, 
and exuberant, but at the same time it is un- 
disciplined. 

Now I believe it may be affirmed, that al- 
though there has been much literature in 
former ages which was both vigorous and un- 
disciplined, still when an age presents, as ours 
does, living examples of perfect intellectual 
discipline, whoever falls below them in this 
respect contents himself with the very kind 
of inferiority which of all inferiorities is the 
easiest to avoid. You cannot, by an effort of 
the will, hope to rival the brilliance of a gen- 
ius, but you may quite reasonably expect to 
obtain as complete a control over your own 
faculties and your own work as any other 
highly-cultivated person. 

The origin of discipline is the desire to do 
not merely our best with the degree of power 
and knowledge which at the time we do act- 
ually happen to possess, but with that which 
we might possess if we submitted to the nec- 
essary training. The powers given to us by 
Nature are little more than a power to be- 
come, and this becoming is always conditional 
on some sort of exercise — what sort we have 
to discover for ourselves. 

No class of persons are so liable to overlook 



THE MORAL BASIS. S3 

the uses of discipline as authors are. Any- 
body can write a book, though few can write 
that which deserves the name of literature. 
There are great technical differences between 
literature and book-making, but few can 
clearly explain these differences, or detect, in 
their own case, the absence of the necessary 
qualities. In painting, the most perfect finish 
is recognized at a glance, but the mind only 
can perceive it in the book. It was an odd 
notion of the authorities to exhibit literature 
in the international exhibitions; but if they 
could have made people see the difference be- 
tween sound and unsound workmanship in 
the literary craft, they would have rendered 
a great service to the higher intellectual dis- 
cipline. Sir Arthur Helps might have served 
as an example to English writers, because he 
has certain qualities in which we are griev- 
ously deficient. He can say a thing in the 
words that are most fit and necessary, and 
then leave it. Sainte-Beuve would have been 
another admirable example of self-discipline, 
especially to Frenchmen, who would do well 
to imitate him in his horror of the dpeupres. 
He never began to write about anything until 
he had cleared the ground well before him. 
He never spoke about any character or doc- 
trine that he had not bottomed (to use Locke's 
word) as far as he was able. He had an ex- 
traordinary aptitude for collecting exactly 
the sort of material that he needed, for ar- 
ranging and classifying material, for perceiv- 
ing its mutual relations. Very few French- 



84 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

men have had Sainte-Beuve's intense repug- 
nance to insufficiency of information and in- 
accuracy of language. Few indeed are the 
French journalists of whom it might be said, 
as it may be truly said of Sainte-Beuve, that 
he never wrote even an article for a news- 
paper without having subjected his mind to a 
special training for that particular article. 
The preparations for one of his Lund is were 
the serious occupation of several laborious 
days; and before beginning the actual com- 
position, his mind had been disciplined into a 
state of the most complete readiness, like the 
fingers of a musician who has been practising 
a piece before he executes it. 

The object of intellectual discipline is the 
establishment of a strong central authority 
in the mind by which all its powers are regu- 
lated and directed as the military forces of a 
nation are directed by the strategist who ar- 
ranges the operations of a war. The presence 
of this strong central authority is made man- 
ifest in the unity and proportion of the re- 
sults ; when this authority is absent (it is fre- 
quently entirely absent from the minds of 
undisciplined persons, especially of the female 
sex) , you have a chaos of complete confusion ; 
when the authority without being absent is 
not strong enough to regulate the lively ac- 
tivity of the intellectual forces, you have too 
much energy in one direction, too little in an- 
other, a brigade where a regiment could have 
done the work, and light artillery where you 
want guns of the heaviest calibre. 



THE MORAL BASIS. S3 

To establish this central authority it is only 
necessary, in any vigorous and sound mind, 
to exercise it. Without such a central power 
there is neither liberty of action nor security 
of possession. "The mind," says Locke, 
4 ' should always be free and ready to turn it- 
self to the variety of objects that occur, and 
allow them as much consideration as shall, 
for that time, be thought fit. To be engrossed 
so by one subject as not to be prevailed on to 
leave it for another that we judge fitter for 
our contemplation, is to make it of no use to 
us. Did this state of mind always remain so, 
every one would, without scruple, give it the 
name of perfect madness ; and whilst it does 
last, at whatever intervals it returns, such a 
rotation of thoughts about the same object no 
more carries us forward toward the attain- 
ment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill- 
horse whilst he jogs on his circular track, 
would carry a man on a journey." 

Writers of imaginative literature have 
found in practice that even the creative fac- 
ulty might be commanded. Charles Baude- 
laire, who had the poetical organization with 
all its worst inconveniencies, said neverthe- 
less that ' ' inspiration is decidedly the sister 
of daily labor. These two contraries do not 
exclude each other more than all the other 
contraries which constitute nature. Inspira- 
tion obeys like hunger, like digestion, like 
sleep. There is, no doubt, in the mind a sort 
of celestial mechanism, of which we need not 
be ashamed, but we ought to make the best 



86 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

use of it. If we will only live in a resolute 
contemplation of next day's work, the daily 
labor will serve inspiration." In cases where 
discipline is felt to be very difficult, it is gen- 
erally at the same time felt to be very desir- 
able. George Sand complains that although 
44 to overcome the indiscipline of her brain, 
she had imposed upon herself a regular way 
of living, and a daily labor, still twenty times 
out of thirty she catches herself reading or 
dreaming, or writing something entirely 
apart from the work in hand." She adds that 
without this frequent intellectual fldnerie, 
she would have acquired information which 
has been her perpetual but unrealized desire. 
It is the triumph of discipline to overcome 
both small and great repugnances. We bring 
ourselves, by its help, to face petty details 
that are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are 
almost appaling. Nothing shows the power 
of discipline more than the application of the 
mind in the common trades and professions 
to subjects which have hardly any interest in 
themselves. Lawyers are especially admir- 
able for this. They acquire the faculty of 
resolutely applying their minds to the dryest 
documents, with tenacity enough to end in 
the perfect mastery of their contents ; a feat 
which is utterly beyond the capacity of any 
undisciplined intellect, however gifted by 
Nature. In the case of lawyers there are fre- 
quent intellectual repugnances to be over- 
come ; but surgeons and other men of science 
have to vanquish a class of repugnances even 



THE MORAL BASIS. 87 

less within the power of the will — the instinc- 
tive physical repugnances. These are often 
so strong as to seem apparently insurmount- 
able, but they yield to persevering discipline. 
Although Haller surpassed his contempora- 
ries in anatomy, and published several im- 
portant anatomical works, he was troubled 
at the outset with a horror of dissection be- 
yond what is usual with the inexperienced, 
and it was only by firm self -discipline that he 
became an anatomist at all. 

There is, however, one reserve to be made 
about discipline, which is this : We ought not 
to disregard altogether the mind's preferences 
and refusals, because in most cases they are 
the indication of our natural powers. They 
are not so always ; many have felt attracted 
to pursuits for which they had no capacity 
(this happens continually in literature and 
the fine arts), whilst others have greatly dis- 
tinguished themselves in careers which were 
not of their own choosing, and for which they 
felt no vocation in their youth. Still there ex- 
ists a certain relation between preference and 
capacity, which may often safely be relied 
upon when there are not extrinsic circumstan- 
ces to attract men or repel them. Discipline 
becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, caus- 
ing immense losses of special talents to the 
community, when it overrides the personal 
preferences entirely. We are less in danger 
of this evil, however, from the.discipline which 
we impose upon ourselves than from that 
which is imposed upon us by the opinion of 



88 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the society in which we live. The intellect- 
ual life has this remarkable peculiarity as to 
discipline, that whilst very severe discipline is 
indispensable to it, that which it really needs 
is the obedience to an inward law, an obedi- 
ence which is not only compatible with revolt 
against other people's notions of what the in- 
tellectual man ought to think and do, but 
which often directly leads to such revolt as its 
own inevitable result. 

In the attempt to subject ourselves to the 
inward law, we may encounter a class of men- 
tal refusals which indicate no congenital in- 
capacity, but prove that the mind has been in- 
capacitated by its acquired habits and its or- 
dinary occupations. I think that it is partic- 
ularly important to- pay attention to this 
class of mental refusals, and to give them the 
fullest consideration. Suppose the case of a 
man who has a fine natural capacity for paint- 
ing, but whose time has been taken up by 
some profession which has formed in him men- 
tal habits entirely different from the mental 
r habits of an artist. The inborn capacity for 
art might whisper to this man, L ' What if you 
were to abandon your profession and turn 
painter? " But to this suggestion of the in- 
born capacity the acquired unfitness would, 
in a man of sense, most probably reply, ' ' No ; 
painting is an art bristling all over with the 
most alarming technical difficulties, which I 
am too lazv to overcome ; let younger men at- 
tack them if they like." Here is a mental re- 
fusal of a kind which the severest self-discip- 



THE MORAL BASIS. 89 

linarian ought to listen to. This is Nature's 
way of keeping us to our specialities ; she pro- 
tects us by means of what superficial moral- 
ists condemn as one of the minor vices— the 
disinclination to trouble ourselves without ne- 
cessity, when the work involves the acquisi- 
tion of new habits. 

The moral basis of the intellectual life ap- 
pears to be the idea of discipline ; but the dis- 
cipline is of a very peculiar kind, and varies 
with every individual. People of original 
power have to discover the original discipline 
that they need. They pass their lives in 
thoughtfully altering this private rule of con- 
duct as their needs alter, as the legislature of 
a progressive State makes unceasing altera- 
tions in its laws. When we look back upon 
the years that are gone, this is our bitterest 
regret, that whilst the precious time, the irre- 
coverable, was passing by so rapidly, we were 
intellectually too undisciplined to make the 
best personal use of all the opportunities that 
it brought. Those men may be truly esteemed 
happy and fortunate who can say to them- 
selves in the evening of their days — "I had so 
prepared myself for every successive enter- 
prise, that when the time came for it to be 
carried into execution my training ensured 
success." 

I had thought of some examples, and there 
are several great men who have J eft us noble 
examples of self-discipline ; but, in the range 
and completeness of that discipline, in the 
foresight to discern what would be wanted, in 



90 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the humility to perceive that it was wanting, 
in the resolution that it should not be wanting 
when the time came that such knowledge or 
faculty should be called for, one colossal fig- 
ure so far excels all others that I cannot write 
down their names with that of Alexander 
Humboldt. The world sees the intellectual 
greatness of such a man, but does not see the 
substantial moral basis on which the towering 
structure rose. When I think of his noble 
dissatisfaction with what he knew ; his cease- 
less eagerness to know more, and know it bet- 
ter ; of the rare combination of teachableness 
that despised no help (for he accepted without 
jealousy the aid of everybody who could as- 
sist him), with self-reliance that kept him al- 
ways calm and observant in the midst of per- 
sonal danger, I know not which is the more 
magnificent spectacle, the splendor of intel- 
lectual light, or the beauty and solidity of the 
moral constitution that sustained it. 



THE MOBAL BASIS. 



LETTER III. 

TO k FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION 

" WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST 

ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE." 

I 

The most essential virtue is disinterestedness— The other viiM 
tues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty— 
The Ultramontane party— Difficulty of thinking disinter- 
estedly even about the affairs of another nation— English 
newspapers do not write disinterestedly about foreign af- 
fairs — Difficulty of disinterestedness in recent history- 
Poets and their readers feel it— Fine subjects for j.oe-ry 
in recent events not yet available — Even history of past 
times rarely disinterested— Advantages of the study of 
the dead languages in this respect — Physicians do not 
trust their own judgment about their personal health — The 
virtue consists in endeavoring to be disinterested, 

I think there cannot be a doubt that the 
most essential virtue is disinterestedness. 

Let me tell you, after this decided answer, 
what are the considerations which have led 
me to it. I began by taking the other impor- 
tant virtues one by one — industry, persever- 
ance, courage, discipline, humility, and the 
rest; and then asked myself whether any 
class of persons possessed and cultivated 
these virtues who were nevertheless opposed 
to intellectual liberty. The answer came im- 
mediately, that there have in every age been 
men deservedly respected for these virtues 
who did all in their power to repress the free 
action of the intellect. What is called the 
Ultramontane party in the present day in- 
cludes great numbers of talented adherents 
who are most industrious, most persevering, 



02 THE IX TEL L E( ' T UA L L IFF. 

who willingly submit to the severest discip- 
line — who are learned, self-denying, and 
humble enough to accept the most obscure 
and ill-requited duties. Some of these men 
possess nine-tenths of the qualifications that 
are necessary to the highest intellectual life— 
they have brilliant gifts of nature ; they are 
well-educated ; they take a delight in the ex- 
ercise of noble faculties, and yet instead of 
employing their time and talents to help the 
intellectual advancement of mankind, they 
do all in their power to retard it. They have 
many most respectable virtues, but one is 
wanting. They have industry, perseverance, 
discipline, but they have not disinterested- 
ness. 

I do not mean disinterestedness in its ordi- 
nary sense as the absence of selfish care about 
money. The Church of Rome has thousands 
of devoted servants who are content to labor 
in her cause for stipends so miserable that it 
is clear they have no selfish aim ; whilst they 
abandon all those possibilities of fortune 
which exist for every active and enterprising 
layman. But their thinking can never be 
disinterested so long as their ruling motive is 
devotion to the interests of their Church. 
Some of them are personally known to me, 
and we have discussed together many of the 
greatest questions which agitate the conti- 
nental nations at the present time. They 
have plenty of intellectual acumen; but 
whenever the discussion touches, however re- 
motely, the ecclesiastical interests that are 



THE MORAL BASIS. 93 

dear to them, they cease to be observers— 
they become passionate advocates. It is this 
habit of advocacy which debars them from 
all elevated speculation about the future of 
the human race, and which so often induces 
them to take a side with incapable and retro- 
grade governments, too willingly overlook- 
ing their deficiencies in the expectation of 
services to the cause. Their predecessors 
have impeded, as far as they were able, the 
early growth of science — not for intellectual 
reasons, but because they instinctively felt 
that there was something in the scientific 
spirit not favorable to those interests which 
they placed far above the knowledge of mere 
matter. 

I have selected the Ultramontane party in 
the Church of Rome as the most prominent 
example of a party eminent for many intel- 
lectual virtues, and yet opposed to the intel- 
lectual life from its own want of disinterested- 
ness. But the same defect exists, to some de- 
gree, in every partisan — exists in you and 
me so far as we are partisans. Let us sup- 
pose, for example, that we desired to find out 
the truth about a question much agitated in a 
neighboring country at the present time — the 
question whether it would be better for that 
country to attempt the restoration of its an- 
cient Monarchy or to try to consolidate a Re- 
publican form of government. How difficult 
it is to think out such a problem disinterest- 
edly, and yet how necessary to the justice of 
our conclusions that we should think disin- 



94 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

terestedly if we pretend to think at all ! It is 
true that we have one circumstance in our 
favor — we are not French subjects, and this 
is much. Still we are not disinterested, since 
we know that the settlement of a great polit- 
ical problem such as this, even though on 
foreign soil, cannot fail to have a powerful 
influence on opinion in our own country, and 
consequently upon the institutions of our na- 
tive land. We are spectators only, it is true ; 
but we are far from being disinterested spec- 
tators. And if you desire to measure the ex- 
act degree to which we are interested in the 
result, you need only look at the newspapers. 
The English newspapers always treat French 
affairs from the standpoint of their own 
party. The Conservative journalist in Eng- 
land is a Monarchist in France, and has no 
hopes for the Republic; the Liberal journalist 
in England believes that the French dynas- 
ties are used up, and sees no chance of tran- 
quillity outside of republican institutions. In 
both cases there is an impediment to the intel- 
lectual appreciation of the problem. 

This difficulty is so strongly felt by these 
who write and read the sort of literature 
which aspires to permanence, and which, 
therefore, ought to have a substantial intel- 
lectual basis, that either our distinguished 
poets choose their subjects in actions long 
pa^t and half -forgotten, or else, when tempted 
by present excitement, they produce work 
which is artistically far inferior to their best. 
Our own generation has witnessed three re- 



THE MORAL BASIS. ( .I5 

markable events which are poetical in the 
highest degree. The conquest of the Two 
Sicilies by Garibaldi is a most perfect subject 
for a heroic poem; the events which led to 
the execution of the Emperor Maximilian and 
deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the 
hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest 
possible material for a tragedy ; the invasion 
of France by the Germans, the overthrow of 
Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic 
ready to hand that only awaits its Homer; 
yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who 
is far gone in intellectual decadence, no great 
poet has sung of these things yet. The sub- 
jects are as good as can be, but too near. 
Neither poet nor reader is disinterested 
enough for the intellectual enjoyment of 
these subjects : the poet would not see his way 
clearly, the reader would not follow unre- 
servedly. 

It may be added, however, in this connec- 
tion, that even past history is hardly ever 
written disinterestedly. Historians write with 
one eye on the past and the other on the 
pre-occupations of the present. So far as 
they do this they fall short of the intellectual 
standard. An ideally perfect history would 
tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as 
it was ascertainable. 

Artists are seldom good critics of art, be- 
cause their own practice biasses them, and 
they are not disinterested. The few artists 
who have written soundly about art have 
succeeded in the difficult task of detaching 



96 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

saying from doing; they have, in fact, be- 
come two distinct persons, each oblivious of 
the other. 

The strongest of all the reasons in favor of 
the study of the dead languages and the liter- 
atures preserved in them, has always ap- 
peared to me to consist in the more perfect 
disinterestedness with which we moderns can 
approach them. The men and events are sep- 
arated from us by so wide an interval, not 
only of time and locality, but especially of 
modes of thought, that our passions are not 
often enlisted, and the intellect is sufficiently 
free. 

It /nay be noted that medical men, who. are 
a scientific class, and therefore more than 
commonly aware of the great importance of 
disinterestedness in intellectual action, never 
trust their own judgment when they feel the 
approaches of disease. They know that it is 
difficult for a man, however learned in medi- 
cine, to arrive at accurate conclusions about 
the state of a human body that concerns him 
so nearly as his own, even although the person 
who suffers has the advantage of actually ex- 
periencing the morbid sensations. 

To all this you ma y answer that intellectual 
disinterestedness seems more an accident of 
situation than a virtue. The virtue is not to 
have it, but to seek it in all earnestness ; to be 
ready to accept the truth even when it is most 
unfavorable to ourselves. I can illustrate my 
meaning by a reference to a matter of every- 
day experience. There are people who cannot 



THE MORAL BASIS. 97 

bear to look into their own accounts from a 
dread that the clear revelation of figures may 
be less agreeable to them than the illusions 
which they cherish. There are others who 
possess a kind of virtue which enables them 
to see their own affairs as clearly as if they 
had no personal interest in them. The weak- 
ness of the first is one of the " ,^st fatal of in- 
tellectual weaknesses: the mental indepen- 
dence of the second is one of the most desira- 
ble of intellectual qualities. The endeavor to 
attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great vir- 
tue, and of all the virtues the one most indis- 
pensable to the nobility of the intellectual life. 

Note. —The reader may feel some surprise that I have not 
Mentioned honesty as an important intellectual virtue. Hon- 
esty is of great importance, no doubt, but it appears to be (as 
to practical effects) included in disinterestedness, and to be 
less comprehensively useful. There is no reason to suspect 
the honesty of many political and theological partisans, yet 
their honesty does not preserve them from the worst intellect' 
ual habits, such as the habit of " begging the question," of mis 
representing the arguments on the opposite side, of shutting 
their eyes to every fact which is not perfectly agreeable to 
them. The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most re- 
spectable and necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward 
the forming of an effective intellectual character. It is valu- 
able rather in the relations of the intellectual man to the outer 
world around him, and even here it is dangerous unless tem- 
pered by discretion. A perfect disinterestedness would en- 
sure the best effects of honesty, and yet avoid some serious 
evils, against which honesty is not, in itself, a safeguard. 

% 



OS THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER IV. 

TO A MORALIST WHO SAID THAT INTELLECTUAL 
CULTURE WAS NOT CONDUCIVE TO SEXUAL 
MORALITY. 

That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy-Two 
different kinds of immorality -Byron and Shelley- 4, pe- 

foreign writer — Reaction to coarseness 1x01110 \ r tV refine- 
ment — Danger of intellectual excesses— Moral utility of 
culture— The most cultivated classes at the same time the 
most moral— That men of high intellectual aims have an 
especially strong reason for morality— M. Taine 's opinion. 

A critic in one of the quarterlies once 
treated me as a feeble defender of my opinions, 
because I gave due consideration to both sides 
of a question. He said that, like a wise com- 
mander, I capitulated beforehand in case my 
arguments did not come up for my relief ; nay, 
more, that I gave up my arms in uncondi- 
tional surrender. To this let me answer, that 
I have nothing to do with the polemical 
method, that I do not look upon an opponent 
as an enemy to be repelled, but as a torch- 
bearer to be welcomed for any light that he 
may bring ; that I defend nothing, but try to 
explore everything that lies near enough. 

You need not expect me, therefore, to de- 
fend very vigorously the morality of the in- 
tellectual life. An advocate could do it brill- 
iantly ; there are plenty of materials, but so 
clumsy an advocate as your present corres- 
pondent would damage the best of causes by 
unseasonable indiscretions. So I begin by ad- 



THE MOBAL BASIS. 99 

mitting that your accusations are most of 
them well founded. Many intellectual peo- 
ple have led immoral lives, others have led 
lives which, although in strict conformity to 
their own theories of morality, were in oppo- 
sition to the morality of their country and 
their age. Byron is a good instance of the 
first, and Shelley of the second. Byron 
was really and knowingly immoral ; Shelley, 
on the other hand, hated what he considered 
to be immorality, and lived a life as nearly 
as possible in accordance w^ith the moral ideal 
in his own conscience ; still he did not respect 
the moral rule of his country, but lived with 
Mary Godwin, whilst Harriet, his first wife, 
was still alive. There is a clear distinction 
between the two cases ; yet both have the de- 
fect that the person takes in hand the regula- 
tion of his own morality, which it is hardly 
safe for any one to do, considering the prodi- 
gious force of passion. 

I find even in the lives of intellectual people 
a peculiar temptation to immorality from 
which others are exempt. It is in their na- 
ture to feel an eager desire for intellectual 
companionship, and yet at the same time to 
exhaust very rapidly whatever is congenial to 
them in the intellect of their friends. They 
feel a strong intellectual attraction to persons 
of the opposite sex ; and the idea of living 
with a person whose conversation is believed 
at the time to promise an increasing inter- 
est, is attractive in ways of which those who 
have no such wants can scarcely form a con- 



100 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ception. A most distinguished foreign writ- 
er, of the female sex, has made a succession 
of domestic arrangements which, if generally 
imitated by others, would be subversive of any 
conceivable system of morality ; and yet it is 
clear in this case that the temptation was 
chiefly, if not entirely, intellectual. The suc- 
cessive companions of this remarkable woman 
were all of them men of exceptional intellect- 
ual power, and her motive for changing them 
was an unbridled intellectual curiosity. 

This is the sort of immorality to which cul- 
tivated people are most exposed. It is dan- 
gerous to the well-being of a community be- 
cause it destroys the sense of security on 
which the idea of the family is founded. If 
we are to leave our wives when their conver- 
sation ceases to be interesting, the foundations 
of the home will be unsafe. If they are to 
abandon us when we are dull, to go away with 
some livelier and more talkative companion, 
can we ever hope to retain them perma- 
nently? 

There is another danger which must be 
looked fairly in the face. When the lives of 
men are refined beyond the real needs of 
their organization, Nature is very apt to bring 
about the most extraordinary reactions. 
Thus the most exquisitely delicate artists in 
literature and painting have frequently had 
reactions of incredible coarseness. Within 
the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an 
obscene Chateaubriand that would burst forth 
occasionally in talk that no biographer could 



THE MORAL BASIS. 101 

repeat. I have heard the same thing of the 
sentimental Lamartine. We know that 
Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, 
took the pleasures of a sailor on the spree. 
A friend said to me of one of the most exquis- 
ite living geniuses: "You can have no con- 
ception of the coarseness of his tastes ; he as- 
sociates with the very lowest women, and en- 
joys their rough brutality." 

These cases only prove, what I have al- 
ways willingly admitted, that the intellectual 
life is not free from certain dangers if we 
lead it too exclusively. Intellectual excesses, 
by the excitement w^hich they communicate 
to the whole system, have a direct tendency 
to drive men into other excesses, and a too 
great refinement in one direction may pro- 
duce degrading reactions in another. Still 
the cultivation of the mind, reasonably pur- 
sued, is, on the whole, decidedly favorable to 
morality; and we may easily understand 
that it should be so, when we remember that 
people have recourse to sensual indulgences 
simply from a desire for excitement, whilst 
intellectual pursuits supply excitement of a 
more innocent kind and in the utmost vari- 
ety and abundance. If, instead of taking a 
few individual instances, you broadly ob- 
serve whole classes, you will recognize the 
moral utility of culture. The most cultivated 
classes in our own country are also the most 
moral, and these classes have advanced in 
morality at the same time that they have ad- 
vanced in culture. English gentlemen of the 



102 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

present day are superior to their forefathers 
whom Fielding described; they are better 
educated, and thy read more ; they are at the 
same time both more sober and more chaste. 

I may add that intellectual men have pecu- 
liar and most powerful reasons for avoiding 
the excesses of immorality, reasons which to 
any one who has a noble ambition are quite 
enough to encourage him in self-control. 
Those excesses are the gradual self-destruc- 
tion of the intellectual forces, for they 
weaken the spring of the mind, not leaving 
it will enough to face the drudgery that is 
inevitable in every career. Even in cases 
w r here they do not immediately lead to visible 
imbecility, they make the man less efficient 
and less capable than he might have been; 
and all experienced wrestlers wdth fate and 
fortune know well that success has often, at 
the critical time, depended upon some very 
trifling advantage which the slightest diminu- 
tion of powder would have lost to them. No 
one knows the full immensity of the difference 
between having power enough to make a lit- 
tle headway against obstacles, and just fall- 
ing short of the power which is necessary at 
the time. In every great intellectual career 
there are situations like that of a steamer 
with a storm-wind directly against her and 
an iron-bound coast behind. If the engines 
are strong enough to gain an inch an hour she 
is safe, but if they lose there is no hope. In- 
tellectual successes ' are so rewarding that 
they are worth any sacrifice of pleasure ; the 



THE MORAL BASIS. 103 

sense of defeat is so humiliating that fair Ve- 
nus herself could not offer a consolation for 
it. An ambitious man will govern himself 
for the sake of his ambition, and withstand 
the seductions of the senses. Can he be ever 
strong enough, can his brain ever be lucid 
enough for the immensity of the task before 
him? 

"Le jeune homme," says M. Taine, "ignore 
qu'il ny a pas de pire deperdition de forces, 
que de tels commerces abaissent le cceur, 
qu'apres dix ans d'une vie pareille il aura 
perdu la moitie de sa volonte, que ses pensees 
auront un arriere-gout habituel d'amertume 
et de tristesse, que son ressort interieur sera 
amolli ou fausse. II s'excuse a ses propres 
yeux, en se disant qu'un homme doit tout 
toucher pour tout connaitre. De fait, il ap- 
prend la vie, mais bien souvent aussi il perd 
Tenergie, la chaleur d'ame, la capacite d'a^ir, 
et a trente ans il n'est plus bon qu'a fair** un 
employe, un dilettante, ou un rentier." 



PART III 

OF EDUCATION. 



LETTER I. 



TO A FRIEND WHO RECOMMENDED THE AUTHOR 
TO LEARN THIS THING AND THAT. 

Lesson learned from a cook— The ingredients of knowledge- 
Importance of proportion in the ingredients— Case of an 
English author— Two landscape painters— The unity and 
charm of character often dependent upon the limitations 
of culture— The burden of knowledge may diminish the 
energy of action— Difficulty of suggesting a safe rule for 
the selection of our knowledge— Men qualified for then- 
work by ignorance as well as by knowledge— Men remark- 
able for the extent of their studies— Franz Wcepke — 
Goethe— Hebrew proverb. 

I happened one day to converse with an ex- 
cellent French cook about the delicate art 
which he professed, and he comprised the 
whole of it under two heads — the knowledge 
of the mutual influences of ingredients, and 
the judicious management of heat. It struck 
me that there existed a very close analogy 
between cookery and education ; and, on fol- 
lowing out the subject in my own way, I 
found that what he told me suggested several 
considerations of the very highest importance 
in the culture of the human intellect. 



OF EDUCATION, 105 

Amongst the dishes for which my friend 
had a deserved reputation was a certain ga- 
teau de foie which had a very exquisite fla- 
vor. The principal ingredient, not in quan- 
tity but in power, was the liver of a fowl ; but 
there were several other ingredients also, and 
amongst these a leaf or two of parsley. He 
told me that the influence of the parsley was 
a good illustration of his theory about his art. 
If the parsley were omitted, the flavor he 
aimed at was not produced at all ; but, on the 
other hand, if the quantity of parsley w r as in 
the least excessive, then the gateau instead of 
being a delicacy for gourmets became an un- 
eatable mess. Perceiving that I was really 
interested in the subject, he kindly promised 
a practical evidence of his doctrine, and the 
next day intentionally spoiled his dish by a 
trifling addition of parsley. He had not ex- 
aggerated the consequences ; the delicate fla- 
vor entirely departed, and left a nauseous bit- 
terness in its place, like the remembrance of 
an ill-spent youth. 

And so it is, I thought, witn the different 
ingredients of knowledge which are so eagerly 
and indiscriminately recommended. We are 
told that we ought to learn this thing and 
that, as if every new ingredient did not affect 
the whole flavor of the mind. There is a sort 
of intellectual chemistry w T hich is quite as 
marvellous as material chemistry, and a thou- 
sand times more difficult to observe. One 
general truth may, however, be relied upon 
as surely and permanently our own. It is 



106 THE INTELLECTUAL LIEE. 

true that everything we learn affects the 
whole character of the mind. 

Consider how incalculably important be- 
comes the question of proportion in our knowl- 
edge, and how that which we are is dependent 
as much upon our ignorance as our science. 
What we call ignorance is only a smaller pro- 
portion — what we call science only a larger. 
The larger quantity is recommeDded as an un- 
questionable good, but the goodness of it is 
entirely dependent on the mental product that 
we want. Aristocracies have always instinc- 
tively felt this, and have decided that a gen- 
tleman ought not to know too much of cer- 
tain arts and sciences. The character which 
they had accepted as their ideal would have 
been destroyed by indiscriminate additions 
to those ingredients of which long experience 
had fixed the exact proportions. The same 
feeling is strong in the various professions: 
there is an apprehension that the dispropor- 
tionate knowledge may destroy the profes- 
sional nature. The less intelligent members 
of the profession will tell you that they dread 
an unprofessional use of time ; but the more 
thoughtful are not so apprehensive about 
hours and days, they dread that sure trans- 
formation of the whole intellect which follows 
every increase of knowledge. 

I knew an English author who by great 
care and labor had succeeded in forming a 
style which harmonized quite perfectly with 
the character of his thinking, and served as 
an unfailing means of communication with 



OF ED UCA Tl ON. 107 

his readers. Every one recognized its simple 
ease and charm, and he might have gone on 
writing with that enviable facility iiad he 
not determined to study Locke's philosophi- 
cal compositions. Shortly afterwards my 
friend's style suddenly lost its grace; he be- 
gan to write with difficulty, and what he 
wrote was unpleasantly difficult to read. 
Even the thinking was no longer his own 
thinking. Having been in too close commu- 
nication with a writer who was not a literary 
artist, his own art had deteriorated in conse- 
quence. 

I could mention an English landscape 
painter who diminished the pictorial excel- 
lence of his works by taking too much inter- 
est in geology. His landscapes became geo- 
logical illustrations, and no longer held 
together pictorially. Another landscape 
painter, who began by taking a healthy de- 
light in the beauty of natural scenery, became 
morbidly religious after an illness, and thence- 
forth passed by the loveliest European scenery 
as comparatively unworthy of his attention, 
to go and make ugly pictures of places that 
had sacred associations. 

For people who produce nothing these risks 
appear to be less serious ; and yet there have 
been admirable characters, not productive, 
whose admirableness might have been less- 
ened by the addition of certain kinds of learn- 
ing. The last generation of the English coun= 
try aristocracy was particularly rich in char- 
acters whose unity and charm was dependent 



108 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

upon the limitations of their culture, and 
which would have been entirely altered, per- 
haps not for the better, by simply knowing a 
science or a literature that was closed to 
them. 

Abundant illustrations might be collected 
in evidence of the well-known truth that the 
burden of knowledge may diminish the en- 
ergy of action ; but this is rather outside of 
what we are considering, which is the influ- 
ence of knowledge upon the intellectual and 
not the active life. 

I regret very much not to be able to suggest 
anything like a safe rule for the selection of 
our knowledge. The most rational one which 
has been hit upon as yet appears to be a sim- 
ple confidence in the feeling that we inwardly 
want to know. If I feel the inward want for 
a certain kind of knowledge, it may perhaps 
be presumed that it would be good for me ; 
but even this feeling is not perfectly reliable, 
since people are often curious about things 
that do not closely concern them, whilst they 
neglect what it is most important for them to 
ascertain. All that I venture to insist upon 
is, that we cannot learn any new thing with- 
out changing our whole intellectual composi- 
tion as a chemical compound is changed by 
another ingredient; that the mere addition of 
knowledge may be good for us or bad for us ; 
and that whether it will be good or bad is usu- 
ally a more obscure problem than the enthu- 
siasm of educators will allow. That depends 
entirely on the work we have to do. Men are 



OF EDUCATION. 100 

qualified for their work by knowledge, but 
they are also negatively qualified for it by 
their ignorance. Nature herself appears to 
take care that the workman shall not know 
too much — she keeps him steadily to his task ; 
fixes him in one place mentally if not corpo- 
really, and conquers his restlessness by fa- 
tigue. As we are bound to a little planet, and 
hindered by impassable gulfs of space from 
wandering in stars where we have no busi- 
ness, so we are kept by the force of circum- 
stances to the limited studies that belong to 
us. If w^e have any kind of efficiency, very 
much of it is owing to our narrowness, which 
is favorable to a powerful individuality. 

Sometimes, it is true, we meet with instances 
of men remarkable for the extent of their 
studies. Franz Woepke, who died in 1864, 
was an extraordinary example of this kind. 
In the course of a short life he became, al- 
though unknown, a prodigy of various learn- 
ing. His friend M. Taine says that he was 
erudite in many eruditions. His favorite 
pursuit was the history of mathematics, but 
as auxiliaries he had learned Arabic, and Per- 
sian, and Sanskrit. He was classically edu- 
cated, he wrote and spoke the principal mod- 
ern languages easily and correctly;* his 
printed works are in three languages. He 
had lived in several nations, and known their 
leading men of science. And yet this aston- 
ishing list of acquirements may be reduced to 

* According to M. Taine. I have elsewhere expressed a 
doubt about polyglots. 



110 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the exercise of two decided and natural tastes. 
Franz Wcepke had the gift of the linguist and 
an interest in mathematics, the first serving 
as auxiliary to the second. 

Goethe said that ' ' a vast abundance of ob- 
jects must lie before us ere we can think upon 
them." Wcepke felt the need of this abund- 
ance, but he did not go out of his way to find 
it. The objectionable seeking after knowledge 
is the seeking after the knowledge which does 
not belong to us. In vain you urge me to 
go in quest of sciences for which I have no 
natural aptitude. Would you have me act 
like that foolish camel in the Hebrew proverb, 
which ingoing to seek horns lost his ears? 



LETTER II. 

TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS. 

Men cannot restrict themselves in learning— Description of 
a Latin scholar of two generations since — What is at- 
tempted by a cultivated contemporary — Advantages of a 
more restricted field — Privilege of instant admission- 
Many pursuits cannot be kept up simultaneously — The 
deterioration of knowledge through neglect — What it 
really is— The only available knowledge that which we 
habitually use— Difficulty in modern education— That it is 
inevitably a beginning of many things and no more — The 
simpler education of an ancient Greek — That of Alcibia- 
des— How the Eomans were situated as to this— The privi- 
lege of limited studies belongs to the earlier ages— They 
learned and we attempt to learn. 

It appears to be henceforth inevitable that 
men should be unable to restrict themselves 
to ons or two pursuits, and you who are in 



OF EDUCATION. Ill 

most respects a very perfect specimen of Avhat 
the age naturally produces in the way of cul- 
ture, have studied subjects so many and so 
various that a mere catalogue of them would 
astonish your grandfather if his shade could 
revisit his old home. And yet your grandfa- 
ther was considered a very highly cultivated 
gentleman according to the ideas and require- 
ments of his time. He was an elegant scholar, 
but in Latin chiefly, for he said that he never 
read Greek easily, and indeed he abandoned 
that language entirely on leaving the Univer- 
sity. But his Latin, from daily use and prac- 
tice (for he let no day slip by without reading 
some ancient author) and from the thorough- 
ness and accuracy of his scholarship, was 
always as ready for service as the saddled 
steeds of Branksome. I think he got more 
culture, more of the best effects of good liter- 
ature, out of that one language than some 
polyglots get out of a dozen. He knew no 
modern tongue, he had not even the common 
pretension to read a little French, and in his 
day hardly anybody studied German. He 
had no scientific training of any kind except 
mathematics, in which I have heard him say 
that he had never been proficient. Of the fine 
arts his ignorance was complete, so complete 
that I doubt if he could have distinguished 
Rigaud from Reynolds, and he had never 
played upon any musical instrument. The 
leisure which he enjoyed during a long and 
tranquil existence he gave entirely to Latin 
and English literature, but of the two he en* 



112 THE IXTELLEirrrAL LIEE. 

7 -i __.;-.:::-_ ;L T — : T -_•_ ;: -;:_ :7 r i: T i-:-:: - 
of a pedant, but because it carried him more 
completely out of tbe present, and gave hini 

~r rr±-r-s'""'.fi_: :: ;-. :::;:- --lit:: :h,.\n«- 
I: rr:«Iu:ei :_i :-li ~~jl : kz.s-~ v: ~" :h-s ~ - 
"is,-i;:i ;: ;. : :i::~ : T .'. _-:_:~Ti„;ii ~Li:ii_- 
~: a 

• r_irrr is rzly -.in izirr-.ii :: :ir - 
' t: — t-:: *:.: :-:_ 1 :'_; : ^ : :i 1; :iz.:s: i.::i.;~ 
"~: .".->"".'- iizv:-fz:r in 7 .:: iiiirilriTiiai r- cr- 
imen T :«u have studied — well, here is a lit- 
tle hst of what you have studied, and prob- 

:;"_7 -' -:. :L> is ii : ;:_il-:s- — 

Greek. Latin. French. German. Italian. 

mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, geol- 

»tany. the theory of music, the practice 

: iiiii-i; ::. :~ iilsT-V^s-iits :_..'_ :i_- : 
about painting, the practice of painting in oil 
iiii --\\:t:-: .~i il:::»Tv,iliv -:7;::^ ;n -:;:> 
- ri t:. -:: t~ 

Tiii.: is :: s.3.7 sir ::-: r:r--s ir_ i ':.:__ 
Zi^ii-L -i:i -.".-::. .-- :.:.:::__ - .--^--. - :;-.- 
and geology as one*, and five branches or de- 

_.:--..-.« I:i T i:-L lTt! " -■ .. t :: i_i : ir : 
as that may be considered to come by nature 
i_ !:_-_--__::_ ~i_: .i. :-,i.j :-.ii rr;z- 
ciency in it caste the leisure of years, we 

hl-.--r Ji-ri: I." IrSS :ii.-,H ^.lirri i.ii- -.. 

_i 7" ; ".'. .:ir :: liiri^r :ir Tii-e 17 : 



suits. any ooe of which is enough to occupy 



OF EDUCATION. 113 

the whole of one man's time. If you gave 
some time daily to each of these pursuits, you 
could scarcely give more than half an hour, 
even supposing that you had no professional 
occupation, and that you had no favorite 
study, absorbing time to the detriment of the 
rest. 

Now your grandfather, though he would be 
considered quite an ignorant country gentle- 
man in these days, had in reality certain in- 
tellectual advantages over his more accom- 
plished descendant. In the first place, he en- 
tirely escaped the sense of pressure, the feel- 
ing of not having time enough to do what he 
wanted to do. He accumulated his learning 
as quietly as a stout lady accumulates her fat, 
by the daily satisfaction of his appetite. 
And at the same time that he escaped the 
sense of pressure, he escaped also the miser- 
able sense of imperfection. Of course he did 
not know Latin like an ancient Eoman, but 
then he never met with any ancient Romans 
to humiliate him by too rapid and half -intel- 
ligible conversation. He met the best Latin- 
ists of his day; and felt himself a master 
amongst masters. Every time he went into 
his study, to pass delightful hours with the 
noble authors that he loved, he knew that his 
admission into that august society would be 
immediate and complete. He had to wait in 
no antechamber of mere linguistic difficulty, 
but passed at once into the atmosphere of 
ancient thought, and breathed its delicate 
perfume. In this great privilege of instanti 
8 



114 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

admission the man of one study has always 
the advantage of men more variously culti- 
vated. Their misfortune is to be perpetually 
waiting in antechambers, and losing time in 
them. Grammars and dictionaries are ante- 
chambers, bad drawing and bad coloring are 
antechambers, musical practice with imper- 
fect intonation is an antechamber. And the 
worst is that even when a man, like yourself 
for instance, of very various culture, has at 
one time fairly penetrated beyond the ante- 
chamber, he is not sure of admittance a year 
hence, because in the mean time the door may 
have been closed against him. The rule of 
each separate hall or saloon of knowledge is 
that he alone is to be instantly admitted who 
calls there every day. 

The man of various pursuits does not, in 
any case, keep them up simultaneously ; he is 
led by inclination or compelled by necessity 
to give predominance to one or another. If 
you have fifteen different pursuits, ten of 
them, at any given time, will be lying by 
neglected. The metaphor commonly used in 
reference to neglected pursuits is borrowed 
from the oxidation of metal; it is said that 
they become rusty. This metaphor is too 
mild to be exact. Bust on metal, even on 
polished steel, is easily guarded against by 
care, and a gun or a knife does not need to be 
constantly used to keep it from being pitted. 
The gunsmith and the cutler know how to 
keep these things, in great quantity, without 
using them at all. But no one can retail 



OF ED UCA TION. 115 

knowledge without using it. The metaphor 
fails still more seriously in perpetuating a 
false conception of the deterioration of knowl- 
edge through neglect. It is not simply a loss 
of polish which takes place, not a loss of mere 
surface-beauty, but absolute disorganization, 
like the disorganization of a carriage when 
the axle-tree is taken away. A rusty thing 
may still be used, but a disorganized thing 
cannot be used until the lost organ has been 
replaced. There is no equivalent, amongst 
ordinary material losses, to the intellectual 
loss that we incur by ceasing from a pur- 
suit. But we may consider neglect as an en- 
emy who carries away the girths from our 
saddles, the bits from our bridles, the oars 
from our boats, and one wheel from each of 
our carriages, leaving us indeed still nominal- 
ly possessors of all these aids to locomotion, 
but practically in the same position as if we 
were entirely without them. And as an 
enemy counts upon the delays caused by 
these vexations to execute his designs whilst 
w r e are helpless, so whilst we are laboring to 
replace the lost parts of our knowledge the 
occasion slips by when we most need it. The 
only knowledge which is available when it is 
wanted is that which Ave habitually use. 
Studies which from their nature cannot be 
commonly used are always retained with 
great difficulty. The study of anatomy is 
perhaps the best instance of this; every one 
who has attempted it knows with what diffi- 
culty it is kept by the memory. Anatomists 



116 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

say that it has to be learned and forgotten six 
times before it can be counted as a possession. 
This is because anatomy lies so much outside 
of what is needed for ordinary life that very 
few people are ever called upon to use it ex- 
cept during the hours when they are actually 
studying it. The few who need it every day 
remember is as easily as a man remembers 
the language of the country which he inhab- 
its. The workmen in the establishment at 
Saint Aubin d'Ecroville, where Dr. Auzoux 
manufactures his wonderful anatomical mod- 
els, are as familiar with anatomy as a painter 
is with the colors on his palette. They never 
forget it. Their knowledge is never made 
practically valueless by some yawning hiatus, 
causing temporary incompetence and delay. 

To have one favorite study and live in it 
with happy familiarity, and cultivate every 
portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a 
small yeoman proprietor cultivates his own 
land, this, as to study, at least, is the most 
enviable intellectual life. But there is an- 
other side to the question which has to Le 
considered. 

The first difficulty for us is in our educa- 
tion. Modern education is a beginning of 
many things, and it is little more than a be- 
ginning. " My notion of educating my boy/' 
said a rich Englishman, ' ' is not to make him 
particularly clever at anything during his mi" 
nority, but to make him overcome the rudi- 
mentary difficulties of many things, so that 
when he selects for himself his own line of 



OF EDUCATION. 117 

culture in the future, it cannot be altogether 
strange to him, whatever line he may happen 
to select. 1 ' A modern father usually allows 
his son to learn many things from a feeling of 
timidity about making a choice, if only one 
thing had to be chosen. He might so easily 
make a wrong choice ! When the inheritance 
of the human race was less rich, there was no 
embarrassment of that kind. Look at the ed- 
ucation of an ancient Greek, at the education 
of one of the most celebrated Athenians, a 
man living in the most refined and intellect- 
ual society, himself mentally and bodily the 
perfect type of his splendid race, an eloquent 
and powerful speaker, a most capable com- 
mander both by sea and land — look at the 
education of the brilliant Alcibiades ! When 
Socrates gave the list of the things that Al- 
cibiades had learned, Alcibiades could add to 
it no other even nominal accomplishment, and 
what a meagre, short catalogue it was ! ' ' But 
indeed I also pretty accurately know what 
thou hast learned ; thou wilt tell me if any- 
thing has escaped- my notice. Thou hast 
learned then thy letters (ypau/uara), to play on 
the cithara (tadapi&tv) and to wrestle (TraAaleiv) , 
for thou hast not cared to learn to play upon 
the flute. This is all that thou hast learned, 
unless something has escaped me." The 
ypdfifiara which Alcibiades had learned with a 
master meant reading and writing, for he ex- 
pressly says later on, that as for speaking 
Greek, iXfopi.&v, he learned that of no other 
master than the people. An English eduear 



118 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

tion equivalent to that of Alcibiades would 
therefore consist of reading and writing, 
wrestling and guitar-playing, the last accom- 
plishment being limited to very simple music. 
Such an education was possible to an Athen- 
ian (though it is fair to add that Socrates does 
not seem to have thought much of it) because 
a man situated as Alcibiades was situated in 
the intellectual history of the world, had no 
past behind him which deserved his attention 
more than the present which surrounded him. 
Simply to speak Greek, e/Jqvi&iv, was really 
then the most precious of all accomplishments, 
and the fact that Alcibiades came by it easily 
does not lessen its value. Amongst a people 
like the Athenians, fond of intellectual talk, 
conversation was one of the best and readiest 
means of informing the mind, and certainly 
the very best means of developing it. It was 
not a slight advantage to speak the language 
of Socrates, and have him for a companion. 

The cleverest and most accomplished Ko- 
mans were situated rather more like ourselves, 
or at least as we should be situated if we had not 
to learn Latin and Greek, and if there were 
no modern language worth studying except 
French. They went to Greece to perfect 
themselves in Greek, and improve their ac- 
cent, just as our young gentlemen go to Paris 
or Touraine. Still, the burden of the past 
was comparatively light upon their shoulders. 
A_n Englishman who had attempted no more 
than they were bound to attempt might be a 
scholar, but he would not be considered so. 



OF EDUCATION. 119 

He might be a thorough scholar in French and 
English, — that is, he might possess the cream 
of two great literatures, — but he would be 
spoken of as a person of defective education. 
It is the fashion, for example, to speak of Sir 
Walter Scott as a half-educated man, because 
he did not know much Greek, yet Sir Walter 
had studied German with success, and with 
his habit of extensive reading, and his im- 
mense memory, certainly knew incompara- 
bly more about the generations which pre- 
ceded him than Horace knew of those which 
preceded the Augustan era. 

The privilege of limiting their studies, from 
the beginning, to one or two branches of 
knowledge, belonged to earlier ages, and 
every successive accumulation of the world's 
knowledge has gradually lessened it. School- 
boys in our time are expected to know more, 
or to have attempted to learn more, than the 
most brilliant intellectual leaders of former 
times. What English parent, in easy circum- 
stances, would be content that his son should 
have the education of Alcibiades, or an educa- 
tion accurately corresponding to that of 
Horace, or to that which sufficed for Shakes- 
peare? Yet although the burdens laid upon 
the memory have been steadily augmented, 
its powers have not increased. Our brains 
are not better constituted than those of our 
forefathers, although where they learned one 
thing we attempt to learn six. They learned, 
and we attempt to learn. The only hope for 
us is to make a selection from the attempts of 



120 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

our too heavily burdened youth, and in those 
selected studies to emulate in after-life the 
thoroughness of our forefathers. 



LETTER III. 

TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS. 

An idealized portrait — The scholars of the sixteenth century 
—Isolated students— French students of English when is- 
olated from Englishmen — How one of them read Tennyson 
— Importance of sounds— Illusions of scholarship — Diffi- 
culty of appreciating the sense— That Latin may still be 
made a spoken language— The early education of Mon- 
taigne — A contemporary instance— Dream of a Latin is- 
. land— Rapid corruption of a language taught artificially. 

In your answer to my letter about the mul- 
tiplicity of modern studies you tell me that 
my portrait of your grandfather is considera- 
bly idealized, and that, notwithstanding all 
the respect which you owe to his memory, you 
have convincing proof in his manuscript an- 
notations to Latin authors that his scholarship 
cannot have been quite so thorough as I rep- 
resented it. You convey, moreover, though 
with perfect modesty in form, the idea that 
you believe your own Latin superior to your 
grandfather's, notwithstanding the far great- 
er variety of your studies. Let me confess 
that I did somewhat idealize that description 
of your grandfather's intellectual life. I de- 
scribed rather a life which might have been 
than a life which actually was. And even this 
"might have been " is problematical. It may 



OF ED UCA TION. 121 

be doubted whether any modern has ever 
really mastered Latin. The most that can be 
said is that a man situated like your grand- 
father, without a profession, without our pres- 
ent temptation to scatter effort in many pur- 
suits, and who made Latin scholarship his 
unique intellectual purpose, would probably 
go nearer to a satisfactory degree of attain- 
ment than we whose time and strength have 
been divided into so many fragments. But 
the picture of a perfect modern Latinist is 
purely ideal, and the prevalent notion of high 
attainment in a dead language is not fixed 
enough to be a standard, whilst if it were 
fixed it would certainly be a very low stand- 
ard. The scholars of this century do not 
write Latin except as a mere exercise; they 
do not write books in Latin, and they never 
speak it at all. They do not use the language 
actively; they only read it, which is not 
really using it, but only seeing how other men 
have used it. There is the same difference 
between reading a language and writing or 
speaking it that there is between looking at 
pictures intelligently and painting them. 
The scholars of the sixteenth century spoke 
Latin habitually, and wrote it with ease and 
fluency. " Nicholas Grouchy," says Mon- 
taigne, " who wrote a book de Comitiis Roma- 
norum; William Guerente, who has written a 
commentary upon Aristotle ; George Buchan- 
an, that great Scotch poet; and Marc An- 
thony Muret, whom both France and Italy 
have acknowledged for the best orator of hits 



122 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

time, my domestic tutors (at college), have 
all of them often told me that I had in my in- 
fancy that language so very fluent and ready 
that they were afraid to enter into discourse 
with me. " This passage is interesting for two 
reasons; it shows that the scholars of that 
age spoke Latin ; but it proves at the same 
time that they cannot have been really mas- 
ters of the language, since they were "afraid 
to enter into discourse " with a clever child. 
Fancy an Englishman who professed to be a 
French scholar and yet ' ' was afraid to enter 
into discourse " with a French boy, for fear he 
should speak too quickly! The position of 
these scholars relatively to Latin was in fact 
too isolated for it to have been possible that 
they should reach the point of mastery. Sup 
pose a society of Frenchmen, in some seclud- 
ed little French village where no Englishman 
ever penetrates, and that these Frenchmen 
learn English from dictionaries, and set them- 
selves to speak English with each other, with- 
/ out anybody to teach them the colloquial lan- 
guage or its pronunciation, without ever once 
hearing the sound of it from English lips, 
what sort of English would they create 
amongst themselves? This is a question that 
I happen to be able to answer very accurately, 
because I have known two Frenchmen who 
studied English literature just as the French- 
men of the sixteenth century studied the lit- 
erature of ancient Eome. One of them, es- 
pecially, had attained what would certainly 
in the case of a dead language be considered 



OF EI) Ut 'A TIOX. 123 

a very high degree of scholarship indeed, 
Most of our great authors were known to him, 
even down to the close critical comparison of 
different readings. Aided by the most pow- 
erful memory I ever knew, he had amassed 
such stores that the acquisitions, even of cul- 
tivated Englishmen, would in many cases 
have appeared inconsiderable beside them. 
But he could not write or speak English in a 
manner tolerable to an Englishman ; and al- 
though he knew nearly all the words in the 
language, it was dictionary knowledge, and 
so different from an Englishman's apprehen- 
sion of the same words that it was only a sort 
of pseudo-English that he knew, and not our 
living tongue. His appreciation of our au- 
thors, especially of our poets, differed so wide- 
ly from English criticism and English feeling 
that it was evident he did not understand 
them as we understand them. Two things es- 
pecially proved this : he frequently mistook 
declamatory versification of the most medio- 
ere quality for poetry of an elevated order ; 
whilst, on the other hand, his ear failed to per- 
ceive the music of the musical poets, as Byron 
and Tennyson. How could he hear their mu- 
sic, he to whom our English sounds were all 
unknown? Here, for example, is the way he 
read " Claribel : "— 

" At ev ze bittle bommess 

Azvart ze zeeket Ion 
At none ze veeld be ommess 

Aboot ze most edston 
At meedneeg ze mon commess 

An lokez dovn alon 



124 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Ere songg ze lintveet svelless 
Ze clirvoic-ed mavi dvelless 

Ze fledgling srost lispess 
Ze slombroos vav ootvelless 

Ze babblang ronnel creespess 
Ze ollov grot replee-ess 
Yere Claribel lovlee-ess." 

This, as nearly as I have been able to ren- 
der it in English spelling, was the way in 
which a French gentleman of really high 
culture was accustomed to read English 
poetry to himself. Is it surprising that he 
should have failed to appreciate the music of 
our musical verse? He did not, however, 
seem to be aware that there existed any ob- 
stacle to the accuracy of his decisions, but 
gave his opinion with a good deal of author- 
ity, which might have surprised me had I not 
so frequently heard Latin scholars do exactly 
the same thing. My French friend read 
4 4 Claribel " in a ridiculous manner ; but Eng- 
lish scholars all read Latin poetry in a man- 
ner not less ridiculous. You laugh to hear 
"Claribel" read with a foreign pronuncia- 
tion, and you see at once the absurdity of 
affecting to judge of it as poetry before the 
reader has learned to pronounce the sounds ; 
but you do not laugh to hear Latin poetry 
read with a foreign pronunciation, and yon 
do not perceive that we are all of us disqual- 
ified, by our profound ignorance of the pro- 
nunciation of the ancient Romans, for any 
competent criticism of their verse. In all 
poetry, in all oratory, in much of the best 
and most artistic prose-writing also, sound 



OF EDUCATION. 125 

has a great influence upon sense: a great 
deal is conveyed by it, especially in the way 
of feeling. If we do not thoroughly know 
and practise the right pronunciation (and by 
the right pronunciation I mean that which 
the author himself thought in whilst he 
wrote), we miss those delicate tones and ca< 
dences which are in literature like the modu- 
lations of the voice in speech. Nor can we 
properly appreciate the artistic choice of 
beautiful names for persons and places unless 
we know the sounds of them quite accurately, 
and have already in our minds the associa- 
tions belonging to the sounds. Names which 
are selected with the greatest care by our 
English poets, and which hold their place 
like jewels on the finely- wrought texture of 
the verse, lose all their value when they are 
read with a vicious foreign pronunciation. 
So it must be with Latin poetry when read 
by an Englishman, and it is probable that we 
are really quite insensible to the delicate art 
of verbal selection as it was practised by the 
most consummate masters of antiquity. 

I know that scholars think that they hear 
the Roman music still ; but this is one of the 
illusions of scholarship. In each country 
Latin scholars have adopted a conventional 
style of reading, and the sounds which are in 
conformity with that style seem to them to 
be musical, whilst other than the accepted 
sounds seem ridiculous, and grate harshly on 
the unaccustomed ear. The music which the 
Englishman hears, or imagines that he hears, 



126 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

in the language of ancient Rome, is certainly 
not the music which the Roman authors in- 
tended to note in words. It is as if my 
Frenchman, having read "Claribel" in his 
own way, had affirmed that he heard the mu- 
sic of the verse. If he heard music at all, it 
was not Tennyson's. 

Permit me to add a few observations about 
sense. My French friend certainly under- 
stood English in a very remarkable manner 
for a student who had never visited our coun- 
try ; he knew the dictionary meaning of every 
word he encountered, and yet there ever re- 
mained between him and our English tongue 
a barrier or wall of separation, hard to define, 
but easy to perceive. In the true deep sense 
he never understood the language. He 
studied it, laid regular siege to it, mastered it 
to all appearance, yet remained, to the end, 
outside of it. His observations, and especially 
his. unfavorable criticisms, proved this quite 
conclusively. Expressions often appeared to 
him faulty, in which no English reader would 
see anything to remark upon; it may be 
added that (by way of compensation) he was 
unable to appreciate the oddity of those in- 
tentionally quaint turns of expression which 
are invented by the craft of humorists. It 
may even be doubted whether his English 
was of any ascertainable use to him. He 
might probably have come as near to an un- 
derstanding of our authors by the help of 
translations, and he could not converse in 
English, for the spoken language was entirely 



OF EDUCATION. 127 

unintelligible to him. An acquisition of this 
kind seems scarcely an adequate reward for 
the labor that it costs. Compared with living 
Englishmen my French friend was nowhere, 
but if English had been a dead language, he 
would have been looked up to as a very emi- 
nent scholar, and would have occupied a pro- 
fessor's chair in the university. 

A little more life might be given to the 
study of Latin by making it a spoken lan- 
guage. Boys might be taught to speak Latin 
in their schooldays with the modern Eoman 
pronunciation, which, though probably a 
deviation from the ancient, is certainly nearer 
to it than our own. If colloquial Latin were 
made a subject of special research, it is likely 
that a sufficiently rich phrase-book might be 
constructed from the plays. If this plan were 
pursued throughout Europe (always adopting 
the Eoman pronunciation) all educated men 
would possess a common tongue which might 
be enriched to suit modern requirements with- 
out any serious departure from classical con- 
struction. The want of such a system as this 
was painfully felt at the council of the Vati- 
can, where the assembled prelates discovered 
that their Latin was of no practical use, al- 
though the Eoman Catholic clergy employ 
Latin more habitually than any other body 
of men in the world. That a modern may be 
taught to think in Latin, is proved by the 
early education of Montaigne, and I may 
mention a much more recent instance. My 
brother-in-law told me that, in the spring of 



128 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

1871, a friend of his had come to stay with 
him accompanied by his little son, a boy 
seven years old. This child spoke Latin with 
the utmost fluency, and he spoke nothing else. 
What I am going to suggest is a Utopian 
dream, but let us suppose that a hundred 
fathers could be found in Europe, all of this 
way of thinking, all resolved to submit to 
some inconvenience in order that their sons 
might speak Latin as a living language. A 
small island might be rented near the coast 
of Italy, and in that island Latin alone might 
be permitted. Just as the successive govern- 
ments of France maintain the establishments 
of Sevres and the Gobelins to keep the manu- 
factures of porcelain and tapestry up to a 
recognized high standard of excellence, so 
this Latin island might be maintained to give 
more vivacity to scholarship. If there were 
but one little corner of ground on the wide 
earth where pure Latin was constantly spoken, 
our knowledge of the classic writers would 
become far more sympathetically intimate. 
After living in the Latin island we should 
think in Latin as we read, and read without 
translating. 

But this is dreaming. It is too certain that 
on returning from the Latin island into the 
atmosphere of modern colleges an evil change 
would come over our young Latinists like 
that which came upon the young Montaigne 
when his father sent him to the college of 
Guienne, "at that time the best and most 
flourishing "in France. " Montaigne tells us 



OF ED UCA TION. 1 20 

that, notwithstanding all his father's precau- 
tions, the place ' ' was a college still. " ' ' My 
Latin," he adds, il immediately grew corrupt, 
and by discontinuance I have since lost all 
manner of use of it." If it were the custom 
to speak Latin, it would be the custom to 
speak it badly; and a master of the lan- 
guage would have to conform to the evil 
usages around him. Our present state of ig- 
norance has the charm of being silent, except 
when old-fashioned gentlemen in the House 
of Commons quote poetry which they cannot 
pronounce to hearers who cannot understand 
it. 

Note. — An English orator quoted from Cicero the sentence 
" Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsi. 
monia." He made the second vowel in vectigal short, and 
fhe House laughed at him ; he tried again and pronounced it 
with the long sound of the English i, on which the critical 
body he addressed was perfectly satisfied. But if a Roman 
had been present it is probable that, of the two, the short 
English i would have astonished his ears the less, for our 
short i does bear some resemblance to the southern i 
whereas our long i resembles no single letter in any alphabet 
of the Latin family of languages. We are scrupulously care- 
ful to avoid what we call false quantities, we are quite utterly 
and ignorantly unscrupulous about false sounds. One of the 
best instances is the well-known " veni, vidi, vici," which we 
pronounce very much as if it had been written vinai, vaidai^ 
vaisai, in Italian letters. 



130 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

LETTER IV. 

TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE. 

Studies, whatever they may be. always considered, by som§ 
a waste of time— The classical languages — The highei 
mathematics — The accomplishments — Indirect uses oi 
different studies — Influence of music — Studies indirect^ 
useful to authors— What induced Mr. Roscoe to write the 
i lives of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X. 

Whatever you study, some one will con- 
sider that particular study a foolish waste 
of time. 

If you were to abandon successively every 
subject of intellectual labor which had, in its 
turn, been condemned by some adviser as use- 
less, the result would be simple intellectual 
nakedness. The classical languages, to begin 
with, have long been considered useless by the 
majority of practical people — and pray, what 
to shopkeepers, doctors, attorneys, artists, 
can be the use of the higher mathematics? 
And if these studies, which have been con- 
ventionally classed as serious studies, are con- 
sidered unnecessary notwithstanding the tre- 
mendous authority of custom, how much the 
more are those studies exposed to a like con- 
tempt which belong to the category of accom- 
plishments ! What is the use of drawing, for 
it ends in a worthless sketch? Why should 
we study music when after wasting a thousand 
hours the amateur cannot satisfy the ear? A 
qaoi bon modern languages when the accom- 
plishment only enables us to call a waiter in 



OF EDUCATION. 131 

French or German who is sure to answer us 
in English? And what, when it is not your 
trade, can be the good of dissecting animals 
or plants? 

To all questionings of this kind there is but 
one reply. We work for culture. We work 
to enlarge the intelligence, and to make it a 
better and more effective instrument. This is 
our main purpose ; but it may be added that 
even for our special labors it is always diffi- 
cult to say beforehand exactly what will turn 
out in the end to be most useful. What, in 
appearance, can be more entirely outside the 
work of a landscape painter than the study of 
ancient history? and yet I can show you how 
an interest in ancient history might indirectly 
be of great service to a landscape painter. It 
would make him profoundly feel the human 
♦associations of many localities which to an ig- 
norant man would be devoid of interest or 
meaning ; and this human interest in the scenes 
where great events have taken place, or which 
have been distinguished by the habitation of 
illustrious men in other ages, is in fact one of 
the great fundamental motives of landscape 
painting. It has been very much questioned, 
especially by foreign critics, whether the in- 
terest in botany which is taken by some of 
the more cultivated English landscape paint- 
ers is not for them a false direction and 
wrong employment of the mind ; but a land- 
scape painter may feel his interest in vegeta- 
tion infinitely increased by the accurate 
knowledge of its laws, and such an increase 



132 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of interest would make him work more zeal- 
ously, and with less danger of weariness and 
ennui, besides being a very useful help to the 
memory in retaining the authentic vegetable 
forms. It may seem more difficult to show 
the possible utility of a study apparently so 
entirely outside of other studies as music is : 
and yet music has an important influence on 
the whole of our emotional nature, and indi- 
rectly upon expression of all kinds. He who 
has once learned the self-control of the musi- 
cian, the use of piano and forte, each in its 
right place, when to be lightly swift or majes- 
tically slow, and especially how to keep to the 
key once chosen till the right time has come 
for changing it ; he who has once learned this 
knows the secret of the arts. No painter, 
writer, orator, who had the power and judg- 
ment of a thoroughly cultivated musician, 
could sin against the broad principles of taste. 
More than all other men have authors rea- 
son to appreciate the indirect utilities of 
knowledge that is apparently irrelevant. 
Who can tell what knowledge will be of most 
use to them? Even the very greatest of au- 
thors axe indebted to miscellaneous reading, 
often in several different languages, for the 
suggestion of their most original works, and 
for the light which has kindled many a shin- 
ing thought of their own. And authors who 
seem to have less need than others of an out- 
ward help, poets whose compositions might 
appear to be chiefly inventive and emotional, 
novelists who are free from the restraints and 



OF EDUCATION. 133 

the researches of the historian, work up what 
they know into what they write ; so that if 
you could remove every line which is based 
on studies outside the strict limits of their art, 
you would blot out half their compositions. 
Take the antiquarian element out of Scott, 
and see how many of his works could never 
have been written. Remove from Gold- 
smith's brain the recollection of his wayward 
studies and strange experiences, and you 
would remove the rich material of the ' ' Trav- 
eller" and the Essays, and mutilate even the 
immortal "Vicar of Wakefield." Without a 
classical education and foreign travel, Byron 
would not have composed "Childe Harold;" 
without the most catholic interest in the liter- 
ature of all the ages, and of many different 
peoples from the North Sea to the Mediterra- 
nean, our contemporary William Morris 
would never have conceived, and could not 
have executed, that strong w^ork "The Earth- 
ly Paradise." It may not seem necessary to 
learn Italian, yet Mr. Roscoe's celebrity as an 
author was due in the first place to his private 
fondness for Italian literature. He did not 
learn Italian in order that he might write his 
biographies, but he wrote about Lorenzo and 
Leo because he had mastered Italian, and be- 
cause the language led him to take an interest 
in the greatest house of Florence. The way 
in which authors are led by their favorite 
studies indirectly to the great performance of 
their lives has never been more clearly illus- 
trated than in this instance. 



134 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

When William Roscoe was a young man he 
had for his friend Francis Holden, nephew of 
Mr. Richard Holden, a schoolmaster in Liver- 
pool. Francis Holden was a young man of un- 
common culture, having at the same time 
really sound scholarship in several languages, 
and an ardent enthusiasm for literature. He 
urged Roscoe to study languages, and used es- 
pecially, in their evening walks together, to re- 
peat to him passages from the noblest poets 
of Italy. In this way Roscoe was led to at- 
tempt Italian, and, having once begun, went 
on till he had mastered it. "It was in the 
course of these studies, 11 says his biographer, 
"that he first formed the idea of writing the 
Life of Lorenzo de 1 Medici." 



LETTER V. 

TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED 
THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF A DI- 
LETTANT. 

Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pur- 
suits and more serious studies— Ail of us are amateurs in. 
many things— Prince Albert— The Emperor Napoleon HI. 
—Contrast between general and professional education 
— The price of high accomplishment. 

I agree with you that amateurship, as 
generally practised, may be a waste of time, 
but the common distinction between amateur 
pursuits and serious studies is inconsistent. 
A painter whose art is imperfect and who 



OF EDUCATION. 135 

does not work for money is called an ama- 
teur; a scholar who writes imperfect Latin, 
not for money, escapes the imputation of 
amateurship, and is called a learned man. 
Surely we have been blinded by custom in 
these things. Ideas of frivolity are attached 
to imperfect acquirement in certain direc- 
tions, and ideas of gravity to equally imper- 
fect acquirement in others. To write bad 
Latin poetry is not thought to be frivolous, 
but it is considered frivolous to compose im- 
perfectly and unprof essionally in other fine 
arts. 

Yet are we not all of us amateurs in those 
pursuits which constituted our education- 
amateurs at the best, if we loved them, and 
even inferior to amateurs if we disliked them? 
We have not sounder knowledge or more 
perfect skill in the ancient languages than 
Prince Albert had in music. We know some- 
thing of them, yet in comparison with perfect 
mastery such as that of a cultivated old Greek 
or Roman, our scholarship is at the best on a 
level with the musical scholarship of a culti- 
vated amateur like the Prince Consort. 

If the essence of dilettantism is to be con- 
tented with imperfect attainment, I fear that 
all educated people must be considered dilet- 
tants. 

It is narrated of the Emperor Napoleon III. 
that in answer to some one who inquired of 
his Majesty whether the Prince Imperial was 
a musician, he replied that he discouraged 
dilettantism, and "did not wish his son to 



136 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

be a Coburg." But the Emperor himself was 
quite as much a dilettant as Prince Albert ; 
though their dilettantism did not lie in the 
same directions. The Prince was an amateur 
musician and artist; the Emperor was an 
amateur historian, an amateur scholar, and 
antiquary. It may be added that Napoleon 
III. indulged in another and more dangerous 
kind of amateur ship. He had a taste for 
amateur generalship, and the consequences of 
his indulgence of this taste are known to 
every one. % 

The variety of modern education encour- 
ages a scattered dilettantism. It is only in 
professional life that the energies of young 
men are powerfully concentrated. There is 
a steadying effect in thorough professional 
training which school education does not sup- 
ply. Our boys receive praise and prizes for 
doing many things most imperfectly, and it 
is not their fault if they remain ignorant of 
what perfection really is, and of the immensi- 
ty of the labor which it costs. I think that 
you would do well, perhaps, without discour- 
aging your son too much by chillingly accurate 
estimates of the value of what he has done, to 
make him on all proper occasions feel and see 
the difference between half -knowledge and 
thorough mastery. It would be a good thmg 
for a youth to be made clearly aware how 
enormous a price of labor Nature has set 
upon high accomplishment in everything 
that is really worthy of his pursuit. It is 
this persuasion, which men usually arrive at 



OF EI) UCA TlQy. 131 

only in their maturity, that operates as the 
most effectual tranquillizer of frivolous activ- 
ities. 



LETTER VI. 

TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE. 

The Author's dread of protection in intellectual pursuits— Ex 
ample from the Fine Arts— Prize poems— Governmental 
encouragement of learning — The bad effects of it— Pet 
pursuits — Objection to the interference of Ministers — A 
project for separate examinations. 

What I am going to say will seem very 
strange to you, and is not unlikely to arouse 
as much professional animosity as you are ca 
pable of feeling against an old friend. You 
who are a dignitary of the University, and 
have earned your various titles in a fair field, 
as a soldier wins his epaulettes before the en- 
emy, are not the likeliest person to hear with 
patience the unauthorized theories of an inno- 
vator. Take them, then, as mere specula- 
tions, if you will — not altogether unworthy 
of consideration, for they are suggested by a 
sincere anxiety for the best interests of learn- 
ing, and yet not very dangerous to vested in- 
terests of any kind, since they can have little 
influence on the practice or opinion of thg 
world, 

I feel a great dread of what may be called 
protection in intellectual pursuits. It seems 
to me that when the Government of a coun- 
try applies an artificial stimulus to certain 



138 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

branches of study for their encouragement, 
by the offer of rewards in honor or in money 
beyond the rewards inherent in the studies 
themselves, or coming naturally from their 
usefulness to mankind, there is a great dan- 
ger that men may give a disproportionate at- 
tention to those favored branches of study. 
Let me take an example from the practice of 
the Fine Arts. A Government, by medals 
and crosses, or by money, can easily create 
and foster a school of painting which is en- 
tirely out of relation to the century in which 
it exists, and quite incapable of working har- 
moniously with the contemporary national 
life. This has actually been done to a consid- 
erable extent in various countries, especially 
in France and in Bavaria. A sort of classi- 
cism which had scarcely any foundation in 
sincerity of feeling was kept up artificially by 
a system of encouragement which offered in- 
ducements outside the genuine ambition of 
an artist. The true enthusiasm which is the 
life of art impels the artist to express his own 
feeling for the delight of others. The offer of 
a medal or a penrion induces him to make 
the sort of picture which is likely to satisfy 
the authorities. He first ascertains what is 
according to the rule, and then follows it as 
nearly as he is able. He works in a temper of 
simple conformity, remote indeed from the 
passionate enthusiasm of creation. It is so 
with prize poems. We all know the sort of 
poetry which is composed in order to gain 
prizes. The anxiety of the versifier is to be 



OF ED UCA TION. 139 

safe: he tries to compose what will escape 
censure ; he dreads the originality that may 
give offence. But all powerful pictures and 
poems have been wrought 1 in the energy of in- 
dividual feeling, not in conformity to a pat- 
tern. 
Now, suppose that, instead of encouraging 

. poetry or painting, a Government resolves to 
encourage learning. It will patronize certain 
pursuits to the neglect of others, or it will en- 
courage certain pursuits more liberally than 
others. The subjects of such a Government 
will not follow learning exclusively for its de- 
lightfulness or its utility ; another considera 
tion will affect their choice. They will inquire 
which pursuits are rewarded by prizes in 
honor or money, and they will be strongly 
tempted to select them. Therefore, unless the 
Government has exercised extraordinary wis- 
dom, men will learn what they do not really 
care for and may never practically want, mere- 
ly in order to win some academical grade. So 

. soon as this object has ht^si attained, they 
will immediately abandon the studies by 
which they attained it. 

Can it be said that in these cases the 
purposes of the Government were fulfilled? 
Clearly not, if it desired to form a permanent 
taste for learning. But it may have done 
worse than fail in this merely negative way ; 
it may have diverted its youth from pursuits 
to which Nature called them, and in which 
they might have effectually aided the ad* 
vancement and the prosperity of the State. 



140 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Let us suppose that a Government were to 
have a pet study, and offer great artificial in- 
ducements for success in it. Suppose that 
the pet study were entomology. All the most 
promising youth of the country would spend 
ten years in emulating Messrs. Kirby and 
Spence, and take their degrees as entomolog- 
ical bachelors. But might it not easily hap- 
pen that to a majority of the young gentlemen 
this pursuit would have acted positively as a 
hindrance by keeping them from other pur- 
suits more likely to help them in their pro- 
fessions ? It would not only cost a great deal 
of valuable time, it would absorb a quantity 
of youthful energy which the country can ill 
afford to lose. The Government would prob- 
ably affirm that entomology, if not always 
practically useful in itself, was an invaluable 
intellectual training; but what if this train- 
ing used up the early vigor which might 
be needed for other pursuits, and of which 
every human being has only a limited sup- 
ply? We should be told, no doubt, that this 
powerful encouragement was necessary to 
the advancement of science, and it is true 
that under such a system the rudiments of 
entomology would be more generally known. 
But the vulgarization of rudiments is not 
the advancement of knowledge. Entomology 
has gone quite as far in discovery, though 
pursued simply for its own sake, as it would 
have gone if it had been made necessary to a 
bachelor's degree. 

You will ask whether I would go so far as 



OF ED UCA TION. 141 

to abolish degrees of all kinds, Certainly 
not; that is not my project. But I believe 
that no Government is competent to make a 
selection amongst intellectual pursuits and 
say, "This or that pursuit shall be encour- 
aged by university degrees, whilst other pur- 
suits of intellectual men shall have no en- 
couragement whatever. " I may mention by 
name your present autocrat of Public In- 
struction, Jules Simon. He is a literary man 
of some eminence ; he has written several in- 
teresting books, and on the whole he is prob- 
ably more competent to deal with these ques- 
tions than many of his predecessors. But 
however capable a man may be, he is sure to 
be biassed by the feeling common to all intel- 
lectual men which attributes a peculiar im- 
portance to their own pursuits. I do not like 
to see any Minister, or any Cabinet of Minis- 
ters, settling what all the young men of a 
country are to learn under penalty of exclu- 
sion from all the liberal professions. 

What I should think more reasonable would 
be some such arrangement as the following. 
There might be a board of thoroughly compe- 
tent examiners for each branch of study sepa- 
rately, authorized to confer certificates of com- 
petence. When a man believed himself to have 
mastered a branch of study, he would go and 
try to get a certificate for that. The various 
studies would then be followed according to the 
public sense of their importance, and would 
fall quite naturally into the rank which they 
ought to occupy at any given period of the 



142 THE 1JJT. .LLECTUAL LIFE. 

national history. These separate examina- 
tions should be severe enough to ensure a ser- 
viceable degree of proficiency. Nobody should 
be allowed to teach anything who had not got a 
certificate for the particular thing he intended 
to profess. In the confusion of your present 
system, not only do you fail to insure the 
thoroughness of pupils, but the teachers them- 
selves are too frequently incompetent in some 
speciality which accidentally falls to their 
share. I think that a Greek master ought to 
be a complete Hellenist, but surely it is not 
necessary that he should be half a mathema- 
tician. 

To sum up. It seems to me that a Govern- 
ment has no business to favor some intellect- 
ual pursuits more than others, but that it 
ought to recognize competent attainment in 
every one of them by a sort of diploma or cer- 
tificate, leaving the relative rank of different 
pursuits to be settled by public opinion. And 
as to the educators themselves, I think that 
when a man has proved his competence in 
one thing, he ought to be allowed to teach 
that one thing in the University without be- 
ing required to pass an examination in any 
other thing. 



OF EDUCATION. 143 

LETTER VII. 

TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE. 

Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly 
for it to be useful— Dr. Arnold— Mature life leaves little 
time for culture— Modern indifference to ancient think- 
ing—Larger experience of the moderns— The moderns 
older than the ancients— The Author's regret that Latin 
has ceased to be a living language— The shortest vray to 
learn to read a language— The recent interest in modern 
languages— A French student of Hebrew. 

I was happy to learn your opinion of the re- 
form so recently introduced by the Minister of 
Public Instruction, and the more so that I was 
glad to find the views of so inexperienced a 
person as myself confirmed by your wider 
knowledge. You went even farther than M. 
Jules Simon, for you openly expressed a de- 
sire for the complete withdrawal of Greek 
from the ordinary school curriculum. Not 
that you undervalue Greek, — no one of your 
scholarship would be likely to undervalue a 
great literature, — but you thought it a loss of 
time to acquire a language so imperfectly that 
the literature still remained practically closed 
whilst thousands of valuable hours had been 
wasted on the details of grammar. The truth 
is, that although the principle of beginning 
many things in school education with the idea 
that the pupil will inmaturer life pursue them 
to fuller accomplishment may in some in- 
stances be justified by the prolonged studies 
of men who have a natural taste for erudition, 
it is idle to shut one's eyes to the fact that 



144 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

most men have no inclination for school-work 
after they have left school, and if they had 
the inclination they have not the time. Our 
own Dr. Arnold, the model English schoolmas- 
ter, said, " It is so hard to begin anything in 
after-life, and so comparatively easy to con- 
tinue what has been begun, that I think we 
are bound to break ground, as it were, into 
several of the mines of knowledge with our pu- 
pils ; that the first difficulties may be overcome 
by them whilst there is yet a power from with- 
out to aid their own faltering resolution, and 
that so they may be enabled, if they will, to 
go on with the study hereafter." The princi- 
ple here expressed is no doubt one of the im- 
portant principles of all early education, and 
yet I think that it cannot be safely followed 
without taking account of human nature, 
such as it is. Everything hangs on that lit- 
tle parenthesis "if they will.' 7 And if they 
will not, how then? The time spent in break- 
ing the ground has been wasted, except so far 
as the exercise of breaking the ground may 
have been useful in mental gymnastics. 

Mature Jife brings so many professional or 
social duties that it leaves scant time for cult- 
ure; and 'those who care for culture most 
earnestly and sincerely, are the very persons 
who will economize time to the utmost. Now, 
to read a language that has been very imper- 
fectly mastered is felt to be a bad economy of 
time. Suppose the case of a man occupied in 
business who has studied Greek rather assid- 
uously in youth and yet not enough to read it 



OF El) CCA TION. 145 

with facility. Suppose that this man wants to 
get at the mind of Plato. He can read the orig- 
inal, but he reads it so slowly that it would 
cost him more hours than he can spare, and 
this is why he has recourse to a translation. 
In this ease there is no indifference to Greek 
culture; on the contrary, the reader desires 
to assimilate what he can of it, but the very 
earnestness of his wish to have free access to 
ancient thought makes him prefer it in mod- 
ern language. 

This is the most favorable instance that can 
be imagined, except, of course, those exceed- 
ingly rare cases where a man has leisure 
enough, and enthusiasm enough, to become a 
Hellenist. The great majority of our con- 
temporaries do not care for ancient thought 
at all, it is so remote from them, it belongs to 
conditions of civilization so different from 
their own, it is encumbered with so many 
lengthy discussions of questions which have 
been settled by the subsequent experience of 
the world, that the modern mind prefers to 
occupy itself with its own anxieties and its 
own speculations. It i^ a great error to sup- 
pose that indifference to ancient thinking is 
peculiar to the spirit of Philistinism ; for the 
most cultivated contemporary intellects seek 
light from each other rather than from the 
ancients. One of the most distinguished of 
modern thinkers, a scholar of the rarest clas- 
sical attainments, said to me in reference to 
some scheme of mine for renewing my classi- 
cal studies, that they would be of no more use 
10 



146 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

to me than numismatics. It is this feeling, the 
feeling that Greek speculation is of less conse- 
quence to the modern world than German and 
French speculation, which causes so many of 
us, rightly or wrongly, to regard it as a palaeon- 
tological curiosity, interesting for those who 
are curious as to the past of the human mind, 
but not likely to be influential upon its fu- 
ture. 

This estimate of ancient thinking is not oft- 
en expressed quite so openly as I have just 
expressed it, and yet it is very generally prev- 
alent even amongst the most thoughtful peo- 
ple, especially if modern science has had any 
conspicuous influence in the formation of 
their minds. The truth is, as Sydney Smith 
observed many years ago, that there is a con- 
fusion of language in the use of the word ' ' an- 
cient." We say "the ancients," as if they 
were older and more experienced men than 
we are, whereas the age and experience are 
entirely on our side. They were the clever 
children, - ' and we only are the white-bearded, 
silver-headed ancients, who have treasured 
up, and are prepared .to profit by, all the ex- 
perience which human life can supply. " The 
sense of our larger experience, as it grows in 
us and becomes more distinctly conscious, 
produces a corresponding decline in our feel- 
ings of reverence for classic times. The past 
has bequeathed to us its results, and we have 
incorporated them into our own edifice, but 
we have used them rather as materials than 
as models. 



OF EDUCATION. 147 

r 

In your practical desire to retain in educa- 
tion only what is likely to be used, you are 
willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon 
says that Latin ought to be studied only to be 
read. On this point permit me to offer an 
observation. The one thing I regret about 
Latin is that we have ceased to speak it. The 
natural method, and by far the most rapid 
and sure method of learning a language, is to 
begin by acquiring words in order to use 
them to ask for what we want ; after that we 
acquire other words for narration and the ex- 
pression of o»ur sentiments. By far the short- 
est way to learn to read a language is to be- 
gin by speaking it. The colloquial tongue is 
the basis of the literary tongue. This is so 
true that with all the pains and trouble you 
give to the Latin education of your pupils, 
you cannot teach them as much Latin, for 
reading only, in the course of ten years, as a 
living foreigner will give them of his own 
language in ten months. I seriously believe 
that if your object is to make boys read Latin 
easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is de- 
plorable that the learned should ever have 
allowed Latin to become a dead language, 
since in permitting this they have enormously 
increased the difficulty of acquiring it, even 
for the purposes of scholarship. 

No foreigner who knows the French people 
will disapprove of the novel desire to know 
the modern languages, which has been one 
of the most unexpected consequences of the 
war. Their extreme ignorance of the litera- 



148 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ture of other nations has been the cause of 
enormous evils. Notwithstanding her cen- 
tral position, France has been a very iso- 
lated country intellectually, much more iso- 
lated than England, more isolated even than 
Transylvania, where foreign literatures are fa- 
miliar to the cultivated classes. This isola- 
tion has produced very lamentable effects, 
not only on the national culture but most 
especially on the national character. No mod- 
ern nation, however important, can safely re- 
main in ignorance of its contemporaries. 
The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut up 
within his own park-wall, having no inter- 
course with his neighbors, and reading noth- 
ing but the history of his own ancestors — for 
the Romans were your ancestors, intellect- 
ually. It is only by the study of living lan- 
guages, and their continual use, that we can 
learn our true place in the world. A French- 
man was studying Hebrew; I ventured to 
suggest that German might possibly be more 
useful. To this he answered, that there was 
no literature in German. ■ ' Vous avez Goethe, 
vous avez Schiller, et vous avez Lessing, mais 
en dehors de ces trois noms il n'y a rien." This 
meant simply that my student of Hebrew 
measured German literature by his own 
knowledge of it. Three names had reached 
him, only names, and only three of them. 
As to the men who were unknown to him he 
had decided that they did not exist. Certainly 
if there are many Frenchmen in this condition, 
it is time that they learned a little German. 



OF ED UCA TIG .V. 1*0 

LETTER VIII. 

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES. 

Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in 
ancient ones— Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions 
—Prevalent illusion about the facility of modern lan- 
guages—Easy to speak them badly— Some propositions 
based upon experience— Expectations and disappoint- 
ments. 

Had your main purpose in the education 
of yourself (I do not say self -education, for 
you wisely accept all help from others) been 
the attainment of classical scholarship, I 
might have observed that as the received 
standard in that kind of learning is not a very 
elevated one, you might reasonably hope to 
reach it with a certain calculable quantity of 
effort. The classical student has only to con- 
tend against other students who are and have 
been situated very much as he is situated him- 
self. They have learned Latin and Greek 
from grammars and dictionaries as he is learn- 
ing them, and the only natural advantages 
which any of his predecessors may have pos- 
sessed are superiorities of memory which may 
be compensated by his greater perseverance, 
or superiorities of sympathy to which he 
may "level up" by that acquired and ar- 
tificial interest which comes from protracted 
application. But the student of modern lan- 
guages has to contend against advantages of 
situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable 
climate contend against the natural sunshine 



150 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of the south. How easy it is to have a fruit- 
ful date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in Eng- 
land ! How easy for the Florentine to speak 
Italian, how difficult for us! The modern 
linguist can never fence himself behind that 
stately unquestionableness which shields the 
classical scholar. His knowledge may at any 
time be put to the severest of all tests, to a 
test incomparably more severe than the strict- 
est university examination. The first native 
that he meets is his examiner, the first for- 
eign city is his Oxford. And this is probably 
one reason why accomplishment in modern 
languages has been rather a matter of utility 
than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up 
great pretensions in the face of a multitude 
of critics. What would the most learned- 
looking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner 
were laughing at us? 

But there is a deep satisfaction in the se- 
verity of the test. An honest and courageous 
student likes to be clearly aware of the exact 
value of his acquisitions. He takes his French 
to Paris and has it tested there as we take our 
plate to the silversmith, and after that he 
knows, or may know, quite accurately what 
it is worth. He has not the dignity of schol- 
arship, he is not held to be a learned man, but 
he has acquired something which may be of 
daily use to him in society, or in commerce, 
or in literature ; and there are thousands of 
educated natives who can accurately estimate 
his attainment and help him to a higher per- 
fection. All this is deeply satisfying to a 



OF EDV CATION. 151 

lover of intellectual realities. The modern 
linguist is always on firm ground, and in 
broad daylight. He may impede his own 
progress by the illusions of solitary self-con- 
ceit, but the atmosphere outside is not fav- 
orable to such illusions. It is well for him 
that the temptations to charlatanism are so 
few, that the risks of exposure are so fre- 
quent. 

Still there are illusions, and the commonest 
of them is that a modern language may be 
very easily mastered. There is a popular 
idea that French is easy, that Italian is easy, 
that German is more difficult, yet by no 
means insuperably difficult. It is believed 
that when an Englishman has spent all the 
best years of his youth in attempting to learn 
Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two 
modern languages with little effort during a 
brief residence on the Continent. It is cer- 
tainly true that we may learn any number of 
foreign languages so as to speak them badly, 
but it surely cannot be easy to speak them 
well. It may be inferred that this is not easy 
because the accomplishment is so rare. The 
inducements are common, the accomplish- 
ment is rare. Thousands of English people 
have very strong reasons for learning French, 
thousands of French people could improve 
their position by learning English ; but rare 
indeed are the men and women who know 
both languages thoroughly. 

The following propositions, based on much 
observation of a kind wholly unprejudiced, 



152 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and tested by a not inconsiderable experience, 
will be found, I believe, unassailable. 

It Whenever a foreign language is perfectly 
acquired there are peculiar family conditions. 
The person has either married a person of the 
other nation, or is of mixed blood. 

2. When a foreign language has been ac- 
quired (there are instances of this) in quite 
absolute perfection, there is almost always 
some loss in the native tongue. Hither the 
noMve tongue is not spoken correctly, or it is 
not spoken with perfect ease. 

3. A man sometimes speaks two languages 
correctly, his fathers and his mother s, or 
his own and his wife's, but never three. 

4. Children can speak several languages ex- 
actly like natives, but in succession, never 
simultaneously. They forget the first in ac- 
quiring the second, and so on. 

5. A language cannot be learned by an 
adult without five years" residence in the 
country ivhere it is spoken, and without hab- 
its of close observation a residence of twenty 
years is insufficient. 

This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. 
Happily, a knowledge which falls far short of 
mastery may be of much practical use in the 
common affairs of life, and may even afford 
some initiation into foreign literatures. I do 
not argue that because perfection is denied of 
us by the circumstances of our lives or the 
necessities of our organization we are there- 
fore to abandon the study to every language 
but the mother tongue. It may be of use to 



OF ED UCA TION. 153 

us to know several languages imperfectly, if 
only we confess the hopelessness of absolute 
attainment. That which is truly, and deeply, 
and seriously an injury to our intellectual 
life, is the foolishness of the two common 
vanity which first deludes itself with childish 
expectations and then tortures itself with 
late regret toi failure which might have been 
easily foreseen. 



LETTEE IX. 

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES. 

Cases known to the Author— Opinion of an English linguist- 
Family conditions — An Englishman who lived forty years 
in France — Influence of children— An Italian in France— 
Displacement of one language by another English lady 
married to a Frenchman— An Italian in Garibaldi's army- 
Corruption of languages by the uneducated when they 
learn more than one — Neapolitan servant of an English 
gentleman— A Scotch servant-woman — The author's eld- 
est boy — Substitution of one language for another— In ma- 
ture life we lose facility— The resisting power of adults- 
Seen in international marriages— Case of a retired English 
officer— Two Germans in France— Germans in London— 
The innocence of the ear— Imperfect attainment of little 
intellectual use — Too many languages attempted in educa- 
tion—Polyglot waiters — Indirect benefits. 

My five propositions about learning modern 
languages appear from your answer to have 
rather surprised you, and you ask for some 
instances in illustration. I am aware that 
my last letter was dogmatic, so let me begin, 
by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. 
The present communication may steer clear 



154 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of that rock of offence, for it shall confine 
itself to an account of cases that I have 
known. 

One of the most accomplished of English 
linguists remarked to me that after much 
observation of the labors of others, and a fair 
estimate of his own, he had come to the 
rather discouraging conclusion that it was 
not possible to learn a foreign language. He 
did not take account of the one exceptional 
class of cases where the family conditions 
make the use of two languages habitual. The 
most favorable family conditions are not in 
themselves sufficient to ensure the acquisi- 
tion of a language, but wherever an instance 
of perfect acquisition is to be found, these 
family conditions are always found along 
with it. My friend W., an English artist 
living in Paris, speaks French with quite ab- 
solute accuracy as to grammar and choice of 
expression, and with accuracy of pronuncia- 
tion so nearly absolute that the best French - 
! ears can detect nothing wrong but the pro- 
nunciation of the letter u ?\" He has lived 
in France for the space of forty years, but it 
may be doubted whether in forty years he 
could have mastered the language as he has 
done if he had not married a native. French 
has been his home language for 30 years and 
more, and the perfect ease and naturalness 
of his diction are due to the powerful home 
influences, especially to the influence of chil- 
dren. A child is born that speaks the foreign 
tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings. 



OF ED UCA TION. 155 " 

It makes its own child language, and the 
father as he hears it is born over again in the 
foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. 
Gradually the sweet child-talk gives place to 
the perfect tongue and the father follows it 
by insensible gradations, himself the most 
docile of pupils, led onward rather than in- 
structed by the winning and playful little 
master, incomparably the best of masters. 
The process here is nature's own inimitable 
process. Every new child that is born to a 
man so situated carries him through a repeti- 
tion of that marvellous course of teaching. 
The language groivs in his brain from the first 
rudiments — the real natural rudiments, not 
the hard rudiments of the grammarian — just 
as plants grow naturally from their seeds. 
It has not been built by human processes of 
piecing together, but has developed itself like 
a living creature. This way of learning a 
language possesses over the dictionary proc- 
ess exactly the kind of superiority which a 
living man, developed naturally from the 
foetus, possesses over the clastic anatomical 
man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. 
The doctor's models are remarkably perfect 
in construction, they have all the organs, but 
they have not life. 

When, however, this natural process of 
growth is allowed to go forward without 
watchful care, it is likely to displace the 
mother tongue. It is sometimes affirmed 
that the impressions of childhood are never 
effaced, that the mother tongue is never for- 



156 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

gotten. It may be that it is never wholly 
forgotten, except in the case of young chil- 
dren, but it may become so imperfect as to be 
practically of little use. I knew an Italian 
who came to France as a young man and 
learned his profession there. He was after- 
wards naturalized, married a French lady, 
had several children, pursued a very success- 
ful career in Paris, and became ultimately 
French Ambassador at the court of Victor 
Emmanuel. His French was so perfect that 
it was quite impossible for any one to detect 
the usual Italian accents. I used to count 
him as a remarkable and almost solitary in- 
stance of a man speaking two languages in 
their perfection, but I learned since then that 
his French had displaced his Italian, and so 
completely that he was quite unable to speak 
Italian correctly, and made use of French in- 
variably when in Italy. The risk of this dis- 
placement is always greatest in cases where 
the native tongue is not kept up by means of 
literature. Byron and Shelley, or our contem- 
porary Charles Lever, would run little risk of 
losing English by continental residence, but 
people not accustomed to reading and writing 
often forget the mother tongue in a few years, 
even when the foreign one which has dis- 
placed it is still in a state of imperfection. 
Madame L. is an English lady who married a 
Frenchman; neither her husband nor her 
children speak English, and as her relatives 
live in one of our most distant colonies, she 
has been separated from them for many 



OF EDUCATION. 157 

years. Isolated thus from English society, 
living in a part of France rarely visited by 
her countrymen, never reading English, and 
writing it little and at long intervals, she 
speaks it now with much difficulty and diffi- 
dence. Her French is not grammatical, though 
she has lived for many years with people who 
speak grammatically ; but then her French is 
fluent and alive, truly her own living lan- 
guage now, whilst English is, if not wholly 
forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. 
She and I always speak French together when 
we meet, because it is easier for her than 
English, and a more natural expression. I 
have known some other cases of displace- 
ment of the native tongue, and have lately 
had the opportunity of watching a case of 
such displacement during its progress. A 
sergeant in the Italian army deserted to join 
Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870. On the 
conclusion of peace it was impossible for him 
to return to Italy, so he settled in France and 
married there. I found some work for him, 
and for some months saw him frequently. 
Up to the date of his marriage he spoke no 
language but Italian, which he could read 
and write correctly, but after his marriage 
the process of displacement of the native 
tongue began immediately by the corruption 
of it. He did not keep his Italian safeiy by 
itself, putting the French in a place ot its own 
as he gradually acquired it, buthe mixed the 
two inextricably together. Imagine the case 
of a man who, having a bottle half full of 



158 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

wine, gets some beer given him and pours it 
immediately into the wine-bottle. The beer 
will never be pure beer, but it will effectually 
spoil the wine. This process is not so much 
one of displacement as of corruption, it 
takes place readily in uncultivated minds, 
with feeble separating powers. Another ex- 
ample of this was a Neapolitan servant of an 
English gentleman, who mixed his Italian 
twice, first with French and afterwards with 
English, producing a compound intelligible to 
nobody but himself, if indeed he himself un- 
derstood it. At the time I knew him, the 
man had no means of communication with 
his species. When his master told him to do 
anything, he made a guess at what was likely 
to be for the moment his master's most prob- 
able want, and sometimes hit the mark, but 
more generally missed it. The man's name 
was Alberino, and I remember on one occa- 
sion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. 
After a visit to Alberino's master, my servant 
brought forth a magnificent basket of trout, 
which surprised me, as nothing had been said 
about them. However, we ate them, and 
only discovered afterwards that the present 
was due to an illusion of Alberino's. His 
master had never told him to give me the 
trout, but he had interpreted some other or- 
der in that sense. When you asked him for 
mustard, he would first touch the salt, and 
then the pepper, etc., looking at you inquir- 
ingly till you nodded assent. Any attempt at 
conversation with Alberino was sure to lead 



OF EDUCATION. 159 

to a perfect comedy of misunderstandings. 
He never had the remotest idea of what his 
interlocutor was talking about; but he pre- 
tended to catch your meaning, and answered 
at haphazard. He had a habit of talking 
aloud to himself, "but in a tongue no man 
could understand." 

It is a law that cultivated people can keep 
languages apart, and in their purity, better 
than persons who have not habits of intellect- 
ual analysis. When I lived in Scotland three 
languages were spoken in my house all day 
long, and a housemaid came to us from the 
Lowlands 'who spoke nothing but Lowland 
Scotch. She used to ask what was the French 
for this thing or that, and then what was the 
Gaelic for it. Having been answered, she in- 
variably asked the further question which of 
the three words, French, Gaelic, or English, 
ivas the right word. She remained, to the 
last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all 
the three could be right. Had she learned an- 
other language, it must have been by substi- 
tution for her own. This is exactly the natu- 
ral process which takes place in the brains of 
children who are transferred from one coun- 
try to another. My eldest boy spoke English 
in childhood as well as any other English 
child of his age. He was taken to the south 
of France, and in three months he replaced 
his English with Provengal, which he learned 
from the servants about him. There were 
two ladies in the house who spoke English 
well, and did all in their power, in compliance 



160 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

with my urgent entreaties, to preserve the 
boy's native language; but the substitution 
took place too rapidly, and was beyond con- 
trol. He began by an unwillingness to use 
English words whenever he could use Pro- 
vencal instead, and in a remarkably short 
time this unwillingness was succeeded by in- 
ability. The native language was as com- 
pletely taken out of his brain as a violin is 
taken out of its case: nothing remained, noth- 
ing, not one word, not any echo of an accent. 
And as a violinist may put a new instrument 
into the case from which he has removed the 
old one, so the new language occupied the 
whole space which had been occupied by Eng- 
lish. When I saw the child again, there was 
no means of communication between us. 

After that, he was removed to the north of 
France, and the same process began again. 
As Provengal had pushed out English, so 
French began to push out Provengal. The 
process was wonderfully rapid. The child 
heard people speak French, and he began to 
speak French like them without any formal 
teaching. He spoke the language as he 
breathed the air. In a few weeks he did not 
retain the least remnant of his Provengal ; it 
was gone after his English into the limbo of 
the utterly forgotten. 

Novelists have occasionally made use of 
cases similar to this, but they speak of the 
forgotten language as being forgotten in the 
manner that Scott forgot the manuscript of 
"Waverlev" which he found afterwards in 



OF El) UCA TION. 161 

the drapers of an old writing-desk when he 
was seeking for fishing-tackle. They assume 
(conveniently for the purposes of their art) 
that the first language we learn is never really 
lost, but may be as it were under certain cir- 
cumstances mislaid, to be found again at some 
future period. Now, although something of 
this kind may be possible when the first lan- 
guage has been spoken in rather advanced 
boyhood, I am convinced that in childhood 
a considerable number of languages might 
succeed each other without leaving any trace 
whatever. I might have remarked that in 
addition to English, Provengal, and French, 
my boy had understood Gaelic in his infancy, 
at least to some extent, though he did not 
speak it. The languages in his case succeeded 
each other without any cost of effort, and 
without any appreciable effect on health. The 
pronunciation of each language was quite 
faultless so far as foreign accent went; the 
child had the defects of children, but of chil- 
dren born in the different countries where he 
live. 

As we grow older this facility of acquisition 
gradually leaves us. M. Philarete Chasles 
says that it is quite impossible for any adult 
to learn German : an adult may learn German 
as Dr. Arnold did for purposes of erudition, 
for which it is enough to know a language as 
we know Latin, but this is not mastery. You 
have met with many foreign residents in Eng- 
land, who after staying in the country for 
many years can barely make themselves in- 
11 



162 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

telligible, and must certainly be incapable of 
appreciating thos e beauties of our literature 
which are dependent upon arrangements of 
sound. The resisting power of the adult brain 
is quite as remarkable as the assimilating- power 
of the immature brain. A child hears a sound, 
and repeats it v/ith perfect accuracy ; a man 
hears a sound, and by way of imitation utters 
something altogether different, being never- 
theless persuaded that it is at least a close and 
satisfactory approximation. Children imitate 
well, but adults badly, and the acquisition of 
languages depends mainly on imitation. The 
resisting power of adults is often seen very 
remarkably in international marriages. In 
those classes of society where there is not 
much culture, or leisure or disposition for cult- 
ure, the one will not learn the other's lan- 
guage from opportunity or from affection, 
but only under absolute necessity. It seems 
as if two people living always together would 
gain each other's languages as a matter of 
course, but the fact is that they do not. 
French people who marry foreigners do not 
usually acquire the foreign language if the 
pair remain in France ; English people under 
similar conditions make the attempt more 
frequently, but they rest contented with im- 
perfect attainment. 

If the power of resistance is so great in 
people who being wedded together for life 
have peculiarly strong inducements for learn- 
ing each other's languages, it need surprise 
us little to find a like power of resistance in 



OF EDUCATION. 16* 

cases where motives of affection are alto- 
gether absent. Englishmen who go to France 
as adults, and settle there, frequently remain 
for many years in a state of half -knowledge 
which, though it may carry them through 
the little difficulties of life at railway stations 
and restaurants, is for any intellectual pur- 
pose of no conceivable utility. I knew a re- 
tired English officer, a bachelor, who for 
many years had lived in Paris without any 
intention of returning to England. His 
French just barely carried him through the 
small transactions of his daily life, but was 
so limited and so incorrect that he could 
not maintain a conversation. His vocabulary 
was very meagre ; his genders w^ere all wrong, 
and he did not know one single verb, literally 
not one. His pronunciation was so foreign as 
to be very nearly unintelligible, and he hesi- 
tated so much that it was painful to have to 
listen to him. I could mention a celebrated 
German, who has lived in or near Paris for 
the last twenty years, and who can neither 
speak nor write the language with any ap- 
proach to accuracy. Another German, who 
settled in France as a master of languages, 
wrote French tolerably, but spoke it intoler- 
ably. There are Germans in London, who 
have lived there long enough to have families 
and make fortunes, yet who continue to re- 
peat the ordinary German faults of pronunci- 
ation, the same faults w T hich they committed 
years ago, when first they landed on our 
shores. . 



164" THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

The child hears and repeats the true sound, 
the adult misleads himself by the spelling. 
Seldom indeed can the adult recover the inno- 
cence of the ear. It is like the innocence of 
the eye, which has to be recovered before we 
can paint from nature, and which belongs 
only to infancy and to art. 

Let me observe, in conclusion^ that al- 
though to know a foreign language perfectly 
is a most valuable aid to the intellectual life, I 
have never known an instance of very imper- 
fect attainment which seemed to enrich the 
student intellectually. Until you can really 
feel the refinements of a language, your men- 
tal culture can get little help or furtherance 
from it of any kind, nothing but an intermin- 
able series of misunderstandings. I think 
that in the education of our boys too many 
languages are attempted, and that their minds 
would profit more by the perfect acquisition 
of a single language in addition to the native 
tongue. This, of course, is looking at the 
matter simply from the intellectual point of 
view. There may be practical reasons for 
knowing several languages imperfectly. It 
may be of use to many men in commercial 
situations to know a little of several lan- 
guages, even a few words and phrases are 
valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual la- 
bor of the higher kind requires much more 
than that. It is of use to society that there 
should be polyglot waiters who can tell us 
when the train starts in four or five lan- 
guages ; but the polyglot waiters themselves 



OF EDUCATION. 165 

are not intellectually advanced by their ac- 
complishment ; for, after all, the facts of the 
railway time-table are always the same small 
facts, in however many languages they 
may be announced. True culture ought to 
strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to 
provide the material upon which that noble 
faculty may operate. An accomplishment 
which does neither of these two things for us 
is useless for our culture, though it may be of 
considerable practical convenience in the af- 
fairs of ordinary life. It is right to add, how- 
ever, that there is sometimes an indirect in- 
tellectual benefit from such accomplishments. 
To be able to order dinner in Spanish is. not 
in itself an intellectual advantage ; but if the 
dinner, when you have eaten it, enables you 
to visit a cathedral whose architecture you 
are qualified to appreciate, there is a clear in- 
tellectual gain, though an indirect one. 



LETTER X. 

TO A STUDENT WHO LAMENTED HIS DEFECTIVE 
MEMORY. 

The author rather inclined to congratulation than to condo- 
lence — Value of a selecting memory —Studies of the young 
Goethe — His great faculty of assimilation — A good liter- 
ary memory like a well-edited periodical— The selecting 
memory in art — Treacherous memories — Cures suggested 
for them — The mnemotechnic art contrary to the true dis- 
cipline of the mind— Two instances— The memory safely 
aided only by right association. 

So far from writing, as you seem to expect 
me to do, a letter of condolence on the subject 



166 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of what you are pleased to call your ' { misera- 
ble memory," I feel disposed rather to indite 
a letter of congratulation. It is possible that 
you may be blessed with a selecting memory, 
which is not only useful for what it retains but 
for What it rejects. In the immense mass of 
facts which come before you in literature and 
in life, it is well that you should suffer from 
as little bewilderment as possible. The na- 
ture of your memory saves you from this by 
unconsciously selecting what has interested 
you, and letting the rest go by. What in- 
terests you is what concerns you. 

In saying this I speak simply from the in- 
tellectual point of view, and suppose you to 
be an intellectual man by the natural organi- 
zation of your brain, to begin with. In saying 
that what interests you is what concerns you, 
I mean intellectually, not materially. It may 
concern you, in the pecuniary sense, to take 
an interest in the law ; yet your mind, left to 
itself, would take little or no interest in law, 
but an absorbing interest in botany. The 
passionate studies of the young Goethe, in 
many different directions, always in obedi- 
ence to the predominant interests of the mo- 
ment, are the best example of the way in 
which a great intellect, with remarkable pow- 
ers of acquisition and liberty to grow in free 
luxuriance, sends its roots into various soils 
and draws from them the constituents of its 
sap. As a student of law, as a university 
student even, he was not of the type which 
parents and professors consider satisfactory. 



OF ED UCA TION. 167 

He neglected jurisprudence, he neglected even 
his college studies, but took an interest in so 
many other pursuits that his mind became 
rich indeed. Yet the wealth which his mind 
acquired seems to have been due to that lib- 
erty of ranging by which it was permitted to 
him to seek his own everywhere, according to 
the maxim of French law, chacun prend son 
bien ou il le trouve. Had he been a poor stu- 
dent, bound down to the exclusively legal stud- 
ies, which did not greatly interest him, it is 
likely that no one would ever have suspected 
his immense faculty of assimilation. In this 
way men who are set by others to load their 
memories with what is not their proper in- 
tellectual food, never get the credit of having 
any memory at all, and end by themselves be- 
lieving that they have none. These bad 
memories are often the best, they are often 
the selecting memories. They seldom win dis- 
tinction in examinations, but in literature 
and art. They are quite incomparably su- 
perior to the miscellaneous memories that re- 
ceive only as boxes and drawers receive what 
is put into them. A good literary or artistic 
memory is not like a post-office that takes in 
everything, but like a very well-edited period- 
ical which prints nothing that does not har- 
monize with its intellectual life, A well- 
known author gave me this piece of advice : 
" Take as many notes as you like, but when 
you write do not look at them — what you re- 
member is what you must write, and you 
ought to give things exactly the degree of 



168 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

relative importance that they have in your 
memory. If you forget much, it is well, it 
will only save beforehand the labor of eras- 
ure." This advice would not be suitable to 
every author ; an author who dealt much in 
minute facts ought to be allowed to refer to 
his memoranda ; but from the artistic point 
of view in literature the advice was wise in- 
deed. In painting, our preferences select 
whilst we are in the presence of nature, and 
our memory selects wnen we are away from 
nature. The most beautiful compositions are 
produced by the selecting office of the mem- 
ory, which retains some features, and even 
greatly exaggerates them, whilst it dimin- 
ishes others and often altogether omits them. 
An artist who blamed himself for these exag- 
gerations and omissions would blame him- 
self for being an artist. 

Let me add a protest against the common 
methods of curing what are called treacherous 
memories. They are generally founded upon 
the association of ideas, which is so far ra- 
tional, but then the sort of association which 
they have recourse to is unnatural, and pro- 
duces precisely the sort of disorder which 
would be produced in dress if a man were in- 
sane enough to tie, let us say, a frying-pan to 
one of his coat-tails and a child's kite to the 
other. The true discipline of the mind is to 
be effected only by associating those things to- 
gether which have a real relation of some 
kind, and the profounder the relation, the 
more it is based upon the natural constitution 



OF EDUCATION. 169 

of things, and the less it concerns trifling ex- 
ternal details, the better will be the order of 
the intellect. The mnernotechnic art wholly 
disregards this, and is therefore unsuited for 
intellectual persons, though it may be of some 
practical use in ordinary life. A little book 
on memory, of which many editions have 
been sold, suggests to men who forget their 
umbrellas that they ought always to associate 
the image of an umbrella with that of an open 
door, so that they could never leave any 
house without thinking of one. But would it 
not be preferable to lose two or three guineas 
annually rather than see a spectral umbrella 
in every doorway? The same writer suggests 
an idea which appears even more objectiona- 
ble. Because we are apt to lose time, we 
ought, he says, to imagine a skeleton clock- 
face on the visage of every man we talk with ; 
that is to say, we ought systematically to set 
about producing in our brains an absurd asso- 
ciation of ideas, which is quite closely allied 
to one of the most common forms of insanity. 
It is better to forget umbrellas and lose hours 
than fill our minds with associations of a kind 
which every disciplined intellect does all it 
can to get rid of. The rational art of memory 
is that used in natural science. We remem- 
ber anatomy and botany because, although 
the facts they teach are infinitely numerous, 
they are arranged according to the construct- 
ive order of nature. Unless there were a 
clear relation between the anatomy of one an- 
imal and that of others, the memory would re- 



170 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

fuse to burden itself with the details of their 
structure. So in the study of languages 
we learn several languages by perceiving 
their true structural relations, and remember- 
ing these. Association of this kind, and the 
maintenance of order in the mind, are the 
only arts of memory compatible with the 
right government of the intellect. Incongru- 
ous, and even superficial associations ought to 
be systematically discouraged, and we ought 
to value the negative or rejecting power of 
the memory. The finest intellects are as re- 
markable for the ease with which they resist 
and throw off what does not concern them as 
for the permanence with which their own 
truths engrave themselves. They are like 
clear glass, which fluoric acid etches indelibly, 
but which comes out of vitriol intact. 



LETTER XI. 

TO A MASTER OF ARTS WHO SAID THAT A CERTAIN 
DISTINGUISHED PAINTER WAS HALF-EDUCATED. 

Conventional idea about the completeness of education— The 
estimate of a schoolmaster — No one can be fully educated 
—Even Leonardo da Vinci fell short of the complete ex- 
pression of his faculties— The word " education " used in 
two different senses — The acquisition of knowledge — Who 
are the learned? — Quotation from Sydney Smith — What 
a " half -educated " painter had learned— What faculties 
he had developed. 

An intelligent lady was lamenting to me 
the other day that when she heard anything 



OF EDUCATION. 171 

she did not quite agree with, it only set her 
thinking, and did not suggest any immediate 
reply. " Three hours afterwards," she added, 
"I arrive at the answer which ought to have 
been given, but then it is exactly three hours 
too late." 

Being afflicted with precisely the same piti- 
able infirmity, I said nothing in reply to a 
statement you made yesterday evening at 
dinner, but it occupied me in the hansom as 
it rolled between the monotonous lines of 
houses, and followed me even into my bed- 
room. I should like to answer it this morn- 
ing, as one answers a letter. 

You said that our friend the painter was 
' 'half -educated." This made me try to un- 
derstand what it is to be three-quarters edu- 
cated, and seven-eighths educated, and finally 
what must be that quite perfect state of the 
man who is whole-educated. 

I fear that you must have adopted some 
conventional idea about completeness of edu- 
cation, since you believe that there is any 
such thing as completeness, and that educa- 
tion can be measured by fractions, like the 
divisions of a two-foot rule. 

Is not such an idea just a little arbitrary? 
It seems to be the idea of a schoolmaster, 
with his little list of subjects and his profes- 
sional habit of estimating the progress of his 
boys by the good marks they are likely to ob- 
tain from their examiners. The half -educat- 
ed schoolboy would be a schoolboy half-way 
towards his bachelor's degree — is that it? 



172 THE INTELLECTlk/LL LIFE. 

In the estimates of school and college this 
may be so, and it may be well to keep up the 
illusion, during boyhood, that there is such a 
thing attainable as the complete education 
that you assume. But the wider experience 
of manhood tends rather to convince us that 
no one can be fully educated, and that the 
more rich and various the natural talents, 
the greater will be the difficulty of educating 
the whole of them. Indeed it does not ap- 
pear that in a state of society so advanced in 
the different specialities as ours is, men were 
ever intended to do more than develop by ed- 
ucation a few of their natural gifts. The only 
man who came near to a complete education 
was Leonardo da Vinci, but such a personage 
would be impossible to-day. No contempo- 
rary Leonardo could be at the same time a 
leader in fine art, a great military and civil 
engineer, and a discoverer in theoretical 
science ; the specialists have gone too far for 
him. Born in our day,^Leonardo would have 
been either a specialist or an amateur. Situ- 
ated even as he was, in a time and country 
so remarkably favorable to the general devel- 
opment of a variously gifted man, he still fell 
short of the complete expansion of all his ex- 
traordinary faculties. He was a great artist, 
and yet his artistic power was never devel- 
oped beyond the point of elaborately careful 
labor ; he never attained the assured manipu- 
lation of Titian and Paul Veronese, not to 
mention the free facility of Velasquez, or the 
splendid audacity of Rubens. His natural 



OF ED UCA TION. 173 

gifts were grand enough to have taken him 
to a pitch of mastery that he never reached, 
but his mechanical and scientific tendencies 
would have their development also, and with- 
drew so much time from art that every re- 
newal of his artistic labor was accompanied 
by long and anxious reflection. 

The word "education " is used in senses so 
different that confusion is not always avoided. 
Some people mean by it the acquisition of 
knowledge, others the development of fac- 
ulty. If you mean the first, then the half -ed- 
ucated man would be a man who knew hall 
what he ought to know, or who only half 
knew the different sciences, which the wholly 
educated know thoroughly. Who is to fix 
the subjects? Is it the opinion of the learned? 
— if so, who are the learned? "A learned 
man ! — a scholar ! — a man of erudition ! Upon 
whom are these epithets of approbation be- 
stowed? Are they given to men acquainted 
with the science of government? thoroughly 
masters of the geographical and commercial 
relations of Europe? to men who know the 
properties of bodies, and their action upon 
each other? No: this is not learning; it is 
chemistry, or political economy, not learning. 
The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet 
of Scholar, is reserved for him who writes on 
the iEolic reduplication, and *is familiar with 
the Sylburgian method of arranging defect- 
ives in co and fu m The picture which a young 
Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowl- 
edge, draws— his beau ideal of. human nature 



174 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

— his top and consummation of man^s powers 
— is a knowledge of the Greek language. His 
object is not to reason, to imagine, or to in- 
vent; but to conjugate, decline, and derive. 
The situations of imaginary glory which he 
draws for himself, are the detection of an an- 
apaest in the wrong place, or the restoration 
of a dative case which Cranzius had passed 
over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to 
observe." 

By the help of the above passage from an 
article written sixty-three years ago by Syd- 
ney Smith, and by the help of another pas- 
sage in the same paper where he tells us that 
the English clergy bring up the first young 
men of the country as if they were all to keep 
grammar schools in little country towns, I 
begin to understand what you mean by a 
half -educated person. You mean a person 
who is only half qualified for keeping a gram- 
mar school. In this sense it is very possible 
that our friend the painter possesses nothing 
beyond a miserable fraction of education. 
And yet he has picked up a good deal of val- 
uable knowledge outside the technical ac- 
quirement of a most difficult profession. He 
studied two years in Paris, and four years in 
Florence and Borne. He speaks French and 
Italian quite fluently, and with a fair degree 
of correctness. • His knowledge of those two 
languages is incomparably more complete, in 
the sense of practical possession, than our 
fossilized knowledge of Latin, and he reads 
them almost as we read English, currently, 



OF EDUCATION. 175 

and without translating. He has the heart- 
iest enjoyment of good literature; there is 
evidence in his pictures of a most intelligent 
sympathy with the greatest inventive writ- 
ers. Without having a scientific nature, he 
knows a good deal about anatomy. He has 
not read Greek poetry, but he has studied the 
old Greek mind in its architecture and sculpt- 
ure. Nature has also endowed him with a 
just appreciation of music, and he knows the 
immortal masterpieces of the most illustrious 
composers. All these things would not qual- 
ify him to teach a grammar school, and yet 
what Greek of the age of Pericles ever knew 
half so much? 

This for the acquisition of knowledge ; now 
for the development of faculty. In this re- 
spect he excels us as performing athletes ex- 
cel the people in the streets. Consider the 
marvellous accuracy of his eye, the precision 
of his hand, the closeness of his observation, 
\ie vigor of his memory and invention! 
How clumsy and rude is the most learned 
pedant in comparison with the refinement of 
this delicate organization! Try to imagine 
what a disciplined creature he has become, 
how obedient are all his faculties to the com- 
mands of the central will! The brain con- 
ceives some image of beauty or wit, and im- 
mediately that clear conception is telegraphed 
to the well-trained fingers. Surely, if the re- 
sults of education may be estimated from the 
evidences of skill, here are some of the most 
wonderful of such results. 



PART IV. 

THE POWER OF TIME. 



LETTER I. 



TO A MAN OF LEISURE WHO COMPLAINED OF 
WANT OF TIME. 

Necessity for time-thrift in all cases— Serious men not much 
in danger from mere frivolity— Greater danger of losing 
time in our serious pursuits themselves — Time thrown 
away when we do not attain proficiency — Soundness of 
former scholarship a good example— Browning's Gram- 
marian—Knowledge an organic whole— Soundness the 
possession of essential parts— Necessity of fixed limits in 
our projects of study— Limitation of purpose in the fine 
arts— In languages — Instance of M. Louis Enault— In 
music — Time saved by following kindred pursuits — Order 
and proportion the true secrets of time-thrift— A waste 
of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear. 

You complain of want of time — you, with 
your boundless leisure ! 

It is true that the most absolute master of 
his own hours still needs thrift if he would 
turn them to account, and that too many 
never learn this thrift, whilst others learn it 
late. Will you permit me to offer briefly a 
few observations on time-thrift which have 
been suggested to me by my own experience 
and by the experience of intellectual friends? 



THE POWEL OF TIME. 177 

It may be accepted for certain, to begin 
with, that men who like yourself seriously 
care for culture, and make it, next to moral 
duty, the principal object of their lives, are 
but little exposed to waste time in downright 
frivolity of any kind. You may be perfectly 
idle at your own times, and perfectly frivo- 
lous even, whenever you have a mind to be 
frivolous, but then you will be clearly aware 
how the time is passing, and you will throw it 
away knowingly, as the most careful of mon- 
ey-economists will throw away a few sover- 
eigns in a confessedly foolish amusement, 
merely for the relief of a break in the habit of 
his life. To a man of your tastes and temper 
there is no danger of wasting too much time 
so long as the waste is intentional ; but you 
are exposed to time-losses of a much more in- 
sidious character. 

It is in our pursuits themselves that we 
throw away our most valuable time. Few in- 
tellectual men have the art of economizing 
the hours of study. The very necessity, 
which every one acknowledges, of giving vast 
portions of life to attain proficiency in any- 
thing makes us prodigal where we ought to be 
parsimonious, and careless where we have 
Ufeed of unceasing vigilance. The best time- 
savers are the love of soundness in all we 
learn or do, and a cheerful acceptance of in- 
evitable limitations. There is a certain point 
of proficiency at which an acquisition begins 
to be of use, and unless we have the time and 
resolution necessary to reach that point, our 



] ;8 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

labor is as completely thrown away as that of 
a mechanic who began to make an engine but 
never finished it. Each of us has acquisi- 
tions which remain permanently unavailable 
from their unsoundness, a language or two 
that we can neither speak nor write, a science 
of which the elements have not been mastered, 
an art which we cannot practice with satisfac- 
tion either to others or to ourselves. Now the 
time spent on these unsound accomplishments 
has been in great measure wasted, not quite 
absolutely wasted, since the mere labor of try- 
ing to learn has been a discipline for the 
mind, but wasted so far as the accomplish- 
ments themselves are concerned. And even 
this mental discipline, on which so much 
stress is laid by those whose interest it is to 
encourage unsound accomplishment, might 
be obtained more perfectly if the subjects of 
study were less numerous and more thorough- 
ly understood. Let us not therefore in the 
studies of our maturity repeat the error of 
our youth. Let us determine to have sound- 
ness, that is, accurately organized knowledge 
in the studies we continue to pursue, and let 
us resign ourselves to the necessity for aban- 
doning those pursuits in which soundness 
is not to be hoped for. 

The old-fashioned idea about scholarship in 
Latin and Greek, that it ought to be based 
upon thorough grammatical knowledge, is a 
good example, so far as it goes, of what 
soundness really is. That ideal of scholar- 
ship failed only because it fell short of sound- 



THE PO WER OF TIME. 179 

ness in other directions and was not conscious 
of its failure. But there existed, in the minds 
of the old scholars, a fine resolution to be ac- 
curate, and a determination to give however 
much labor might be necessary for the attain- 
ment of accuracy, in which there was much 
grandeur. Like Mr. Browning's Gramma- 
rian, they said — 

" Let me know all ! Prate not of most or least 
Painful or easy: " 

and so at least they came to know the ancient 
tongues grammatically, which few of us do in 
these days. 

I should define each kind of knowledge as 
an organic whole and soundness as the com- 
plete possession of all the essential parts. 
For example, soundness in violin-playing con- 
sists in being able to play the notes in all the 
positions, in tune, and with a pure intonation, 
whatever may be the degree of rapidity indi- 
cated by the musical composer. Soundness 
in painting consists in being able to lay a 
patch of color having exactly the right shape 
and tint. Soundness in the use of language 
consists in being able to put the right word in 
the right place. In each of the sciences, there 
are certain elementary notions without which 
sound knowledge is not possible, but these el- 
ementary notions are more easily and rapidly 
acquired than the elaborate knowledge or con- 
firmed skill necessary to the artist or the lin- 
guist. A man may be a sound botanist without 
knowing a very great number of plants, and 



180 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the elements of sound botanical knowledge 
maybe printed in a portable volume. And so 
it is with all the physical sciences; the ele- 
mentary notions which are necessary to sound- 
ness of knowledge may be acquired rapidly and 
at any age. Hence it follows that all w^hose 
leisure for culture is limited, and who value 
soundness of knowledge, do wisely to pursue 
some branch of natural history rather than 
languages or the fine arts. 

It is well for every one who desires to attain 
a perfect economy of time, to make a list of 
the different pursuits to which he has devoted 
himself, and to put a note opposite to each of 
them indicating the degree of its unsoundness 
with as little self-delusion as may be. After 
having done this, he may easily ascertain in 
how many of these pursuits a sufficient de- 
gree of soundness is attainable for him, and 
when this has been decided he may at once 
effect a great saving by the total renuncia- 
tion of the rest. With regard to those which 
remain, and which are to be carried farther, 
the next thing to be settled is the exact limit 
of their cultivation. Nothing is so favorable 
to sound culture as the definite fixing of lim- 
its. Suppose, for example, that the student 
said to himself ' ' I desire to know the flora of 
the valley I live in," and then set to work 
systematically to make a herbarium illustrat- 
ing that flora, it is probable that his labor 
would be more thorough, his temper more 
watchful and hopeful, than if he set himself to 
the boundless task of the illimitable flora of 



THE PO WER OF TIME. 1S1 

the world. Or in the pursuit of fine art, an 
amateur discouraged by the glaring unsound- 
ness of the kind of art taught by ordinary 
drawing-masters, would find the basis of 
a more substantial superstructure on a nar- 
rower but firmer ground. Suppose that in- 
stead of the usual messes of bad color and 
bad form, the student produced work having 
some definite and not unattainable purpose, 
would there not be, here also, an assured econ- 
omy of time? Accurate drawing is the basis 
of soundness in the fine arts, and an amateur, 
by perseverance, may reach accuracy in draw- 
ing ; this, at least, has been proved by some 
examples— not by many, certainly, but by 
some. In languages we may have a limited 
purpose also. That charming and most intelli- 
gent traveller, Louis Enault, tells us that he 
regularly gave a week to the study of each 
new language that he needed, and found that 
week sufficient. The assertion is not so pre- 
sumptuous as it appears. For the practical 
necessities of travelling M. Enault found that 
he required about four hundred words, and 
that, having a good memory, he was able to 
learn about seventy words a day. The secret 
of his success was the invaluable art of selec- 
tion, and the strict limitation of effort in ac- 
cordance with a preconceived design. A 
traveller not so well skilled in selection might 
have learned a thousand words with less ad- 
vantage to his travels, and a traveller less de- 
cided in purpose might have wasted several 
months on the frontier of every new country 



182 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

in hopeless efforts to master the intricacies of 
grammatical form. It is evident that in the 
strictest sense M. EnauhVs knowledge of Nor- 
wegian cannot have been sound, since he did 
not master the grammar, but it was sound in 
its own strictly limited way, since he got pos- 
session of the four hundred words which were 
to serve him as current coin. On the same 
principle it is a good plan for students of Latin 
and Greek who have not time to reach true 
scholarship (half a lifetime is necessary for 
that), to propose to themselves simply the 
reading of the original authors with the help 
of a literal translation. In this way they 
may attain a closer acquaintance with an- 
cient literature than would be possible by 
translation alone, whilst on the other hand 
their reading will be much more extensive 
on account of its greater rapidity. It is, for 
most of us, a waste of time to read Latin and 
Greek without a translation, on account of 
the comparative slowness of the process ; but 
it is always an advantage to know what was 
really said in the original, and to test the ex- 
actness of the translator by continual refer- 
ence to the ipsissima verba of the author. 
When the knowledge of the ancient language 
is not sufficient even for this, it may still be 
of use for occasional comparison, even though 
the passage has to be fought through a coupes 
de dictionnaire. What most of us need in 
reference to the ancient languages is a frank 
resignation to a restriction of some' kind. It 
is simply impossible for men occupied as most 



THE POWER OF TIME. 183 

of us are in other pursuits to reach perfect 
scholarship in those languages, and if we 
reached it we should not have time to main- 
tain it. 

In modern languages it is not so easy to fix 
limits satisfactorily. You may resolve to 
read French or German without either writ- 
ing or speaking them, and that would be an 
effectual limit, certainly. But in practice it 
is found difficult to keep within that boun- 
dary if ever you travel or have intercourse 
with foreigners. And when once you begin 
to speak, it is so humiliating to speak badly, 
that a lover of soundness in accomplishment 
will never rest perfectly satisfied until he 
speaks like a cultivated native, which nobody 
ever did except under peculiar family condi- 
tions. 

In music the limits are found more easily. 
The amateur musician is frequently not infe- 
rior in feeling and taste to the more accom- 
plished professional, and by selecting those 
compositions which require much feeling and 
taste for their interpretation, but not so much 
manual skill, he may reach a sufficient suc- 
cess. The art is to choose the very simplest 
music (provided of course that it is beautiful, 
which it frequently is), and to avoid all tech- 
nical difficulties which are not really neces- 
sary to the expression of feeling. "The ama- 
teur ought also to select the easiest instru- 
ment, an instrument in which the notes are 
made for him already, rather than one which 
compels him to fix the notes as he is playing. 



184 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

The violin tempts amateurs who have a deep 
feeling for music because it renders feeling as 
no other instrument can render it, but the 
difficulty of just intonation is almost insuper- 
able unless the whole time is given to that 
one instrument. It is a fatal error to perform 
on several different instruments, and an 
amateur who has done so may find a desirable 
limitation in restricting himself to one. 

Much time is saved by following pursuits 
which help each other. It is a great help to a 
landscape painter to know the botany of the 
country he works in, for botany gives the 
greatest possible distinctness to his memory 
of all kinds of vegetation. Therefore, if a 
landscape painter takes to the study of science 
at all, he would do well to study botany, 
which would be of use in his painting, rather 
than chemistry or mathematics, which would 
be entirely disconnected from it. The mem- 
ory easily retains the studies which are aux- 
iliary to the chief pursuit. Entomologists 
remember plants well, the reason being that 
' they find insects in them, just as Leslie the 
painter had an excellent memory for houses 
where there were any good pictures to be 
found. 

The secret of order and proportion in our 
studies is the true secret of economy in time. 
To have one main pursuit and several auxil- 
iaries, but none that are not auxiliary, is the 
true principle of arrangement. Many hard 
workers have followed pursuits as widely dis- 
connected as possible, but this was for the 



THE POWER OF TIME. 185 

refreshment of absolute change, not for the 
economy of time. 

Lastly, it is a deplorable waste of time to 
leave fortresses untaken in our rear. What- 
ever has to be mastered ought to be mastered 
so thoroughly that we shall not have to come 
back to it when we ought to be carrying the 
war far into the enemy's country. But to 
study on this sound principle, we require not 
to be hurried. And this is why, to a sincere 
student, all external pressure, whether of 
examiners, or poverty, or "business engage- 
ments, which causes him to leave work be- 
hind him which was not done as it ought to 
have been done, is so grievously, so intoler- 
ably vexatious. 



LETTER II. 

TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND EN- 
ERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR THE 
FUTURE. 

Mistaken estimates aJbout time and occasion — The Unknown 
Element —Procrastination often time's best preserver — 
Napoleon's advice to do nothing at all— Use of delibera- 
tion and of intervals of leisure — Artistic advantages of 
calculating time — Prevalent childishness about time — Illu- 
sions about reading — Bad economy of reading in lan- 
guages we have not mastered— That we ought to be 
thrifty of time, but not avaricious— Time necessary in 
production — Men who work best under the sense of pres- 
sure — Rossini — That these cases prove nothing against 
time-thrift — The waste of time from miscalculation — Peo- 
ple calculate accurately for short spaces, but do not cal- 



186 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

culate so well for long ones— Reason for this— Stupidity 
of the Philistines about Avasted time— Topffer and Claude 
Tillier— Retrospective miscalculations, and the regrets 
that result from them. 

Have you ever observed that we pay much 
more attention to a wise passage when it is 
quoted, than when we read it in the original 
author? On the same principle, people will 
give a higher price to a picture-dealer than 
they would have given to the painter himself. 
The picture that has been once bought has a 
recommendation, and the quoted passage is 
both recommended and isolated from the con- 
text. 

Trusting to this well-known principle, al- 
though I am aware that you have read every- 
thing that Sir Arthur Helps has published, I 
proceed to make the following quotation from 
one of his wisest books. 

* ' Time and occasion are the two important 
circumstances in human life, as regards which 
the most mistaken estimates are made. And 
the error is universal. It besets even the 
most studious and philosophic men. This 
may notably be seen in the present day, when 
many most distinguished men have laid down 
projects for literature and philosophy, to be 
accomplished by them in their own lifetime, 
which would require several men and many 
lifetimes to complete; and, generally speak- 
ing, if any person, who has passed the merid- 
ian of life, looks back upon his career, he will 
probably own that his greatest errors have 
arisen from his not having made sufficient 



the power of time. ist 

allowance for the length of time which his 
various schemes required for their fulfil- 
ment.'' 

There are many traditional maxims about 
time which insist upon its brevity, upon the 
necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon 
the impossibility of recovering what is lost ; 
but the practical effect of these maxims upon 
conduct can scarcely be said to answer to 
their undeniable importance. The truth is, 
that although they tell us to economize our 
time, they cannot, in the nature of things, in- 
struct us as to the methods by which it is to be 
economized. Human life is so extremely va- 
rious and complicated, whilst it tends every 
day to still greater variety and complication, 
that all maxims of a general nature require 
a far higher degree of intelligence in their 
application to individual cases than it ever 
cost originally to invent them. Any person 
gifted with ordinary common sense can per- 
ceive that life is short, that time flies, that 
we ought to make good use of the present; 
but it needs the union of much experience, 
with the most consummate wisdom, to know 
exactly what ought to be done and what 
ought to be left undone — the latter being 
frequently by far the more important of the 
two. 

Amongst . the favorable influences of my 
early life was the kindness of a venerable 
country gentleman, who had seen a great 
deal of the world and passed many years, be- 
fore he inherited his estates, in the practice 



188 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of a laborious profession. I remember a the- 
ory of his, that experience was much less 
valuable than is generally supposed, because, 
except in matters of simple routine, the prob- 
lems that present themselves to us for solu- 
tion are nearly always dangerous from the 
presence of some unknown element. The un- 
known element he regarded as a hidden pit- 
fall, and he warned me that in my progress 
through life I might always expect to tumble 
into it. This saying of his has been so often 
confirmed since then, that I now count upon 
the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty. 
Very frequently I have escaped it, but more 
by good luck than good management. Some- 
times I have tumbled into it, and when this 
misfortune occurred it has not unfrequently 
been in consequence of having acted upon the 
advice of some very knowing and experi- 
enced person indeed. We have all read, 
when we were boys, Captain Marryat's u Mid- 
shipman Easy. " There is a passage in that 
story which may serve as an illustration of 
what is constantly happening in actual life. 
The boats of the Harpy were ordered to board 
one of the enemy's vessels ; young Easy was 
in command of one of these boats, and as 
they had to wait he began to fish. After they 
had received the order to advance, he delayed 
a little to catch his fish, and this delay not 
only saved him from being sunk by the en- 
emy's broadside, but enabled him to board 
the Frenchman. Here the pitfall was avoid- 
ed by idling away a minute of time on an oc- 



THE POWER OF TIME. 189 

casion when minutes were like hours ; yet it 
was mere luck, not wisdom, which led to the 
good result. There was a sad railway acci- 
dent on one of the continental lines last 
autumn; a notable personage would have 
been in the train if he had arrived in time for 
it, but his miscalculation saved him. In mat- 
ters where there is no risk of the loss of life, 
but only of the waste of a portion of it in un- 
profitable employment, it frequently happens 
that procrastination, which is reputed to be 
the thief of time, becomes its best preserver. 
Suppose that you undertake an enterprise, 
but defer the execution of it from day to day : 
it is quite possible that in the interval some 
fact may accidentally come to your knowl- 
edge which would cause a great modification 
of your plan, or even its complete abandon- 
ment. Every thinking person is well aware 
that the enormous loss of time caused by the 
friction of our legislative machinery has pre- 
served the country from a great deal of crude 
and ill-digested legislation. Even Napoleon 
the Great who had a rapidity of conception 
and of action so far surpassing that of other 
kings and commanders that it seems to us al- 
most supernatural, said that when you did 
not quite know what ought to be done it was 
best to do nothing at all. One of the most 
distinguished of living painters said exactly 
the same thing with reference to the practice 
of his art, and added that very little time 
would be needed for the actual execution of a 
picture if only the artist knew beforehand 



190 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

how and where to lay the color. It so often 
happens that mere activity is a waste of time, 
that people who have a morbid habit of being 
busy are often terrible time- wasters, whilst, 
on the contrary, those who are judiciously de- 
liberate, and allow themselves intervals of 
leisure, see the way before them in those in- 
tervals, and save time by the accuracy of 
their calculations,, 

A largely intelligent thrift of time is neces- 
sary to all great works— and many works are 
very great indeed relatively to the energies 
of a single individual, which pass unper- 
ceived in' the tumult of the world. The ad- 
vantages of calculating time are artistic as 
well as economical. I think that, in this 
respect, magnificent as are the cathedrals 
which the Gothic builders have left us, they 
committed an artistic error in the very im- 
mensity of their plans. They do not appear 
to have reflected that from the continual 
changes of fashion in architecture, incongru- 
ous work would be sure to intrude itself be- 
fore their gigantic projects could be realized 
by the generations that were to succeed them. 
For a work of that kind to possess artistic 
unity, it ought to be completely realized 
within the space of forty years. How great 
is the charm of those perfect edifices which, 
like the Sainte Chapelle, are the realization 
of one sublime idea? And those changes in 
national thought which have made the old 
cathedrals a jumble of incongruous styles, 
have their parallel in the life of every indi- 



THE POWER OF TIME. 101 

vidual workman. We change from year to 
year, and any work which occupies us for 
very long will be wanting in unity of manner. 
Men are apt enough of themselves to fall 
into the most astonishing delusions about the 
opportunities which time affords, but they 
are even more deluded by the talk of the 
people about them. When children hear 
that a new carriage has been ordered of the 
builder, they expect to see it driven up to the 
door in a fortnight, with the paint quite dry 
on the panels. All people are children in this 
respect, except the workman, who knows the 
endless details of production ; and the work- 
man himself, notwithstanding the lessons of 
experience, makes light of the future task. 
What gigantic plans we scheme, and how lit- 
tle we advance in the labor of a day ! Three 
pages of the book (to be half erased to-mor- 
row), a bit of drapery in the picture that will 
probably have to be done over again, the im- 
perceptible removal of an ounce of marble- 
dust from the statue that seems as if it never 
would be finished; so much from dawn to 
twilight has been the accomplishment of the 
golden hours. If there is one lesson which 
experience teaches, surely it is this, to make 
plans that are strictly limited, and to arrange 
our work in a practicable way within the 
limits that we must accept. Others expect 
so much from us that it seems as if we had 
accomplished nothing. "What! have you 
done only that?" they say, or we know by 
their looks that they are thinking it. 



192 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

The most illusory of all the work that we 
propose to ourselves is reading. It seems so 
easy to read, that we intend, in the indefinite 
future, to master the vastest literatures. We 
cannot bring ourselves to admit that the li- 
brary we have collected is in great part closed 
to us simply by want of time. A dear friend 
of mine, who was a solicitor with a large prac- 
tice, indulged in wonderful illusions about 
reading, and collected several thousand vol- 
umes, all fine editions, but he died without 
having cut their leaves. I like the university 
habit of making reading a business, and esti- 
mating the mastery of a few authors as a just 
title to consideration for scholarship. I should 
like very well to be shut up in a garden for a 
whole summer with no literature but the • ' Fae- 
ry Queene," and one year I very nearly real- 
ized that project, but publishers and the post- 
man interfered with it. After all, this business 
of reading ought to be less illusory than most 
others, for printers divide books into pages, 
which they number, so that, with a moderate 
skill in arithmetic, one ought to be able to 
foresee the limits of his possibilities. There is 
another observation which may be suggested, 
and that is to take note of the time required 
for reading different languages. We read 
very slowly when the language is imperfectly 
mastered, and we need the dictionary, where- 
as in the native tongue we see the whole page 
almost at a glance, as if it were a picture. 
People whose time for reading is limited 
ought not to waste it in grammars and die- 



THE PO WEB OF TIME. 103 

tionaries, but to confine themselves resolutely 
to a couple of languages, or three at the very 
utmost, notwithstanding the contempt of 
polyglots, who estimate your learning by the 
variety of your tongues. It is a fearful throw- 
ing away of time, from the literary point of 
view, to begin more languages than you can 
master or retain, and to be always puzzling 
yourself about irregular verbs. 

All plans for sparing time in intellectual 
matters ought, however, to proceed upon the 
principle of thrift, and not upon the princi- 
ple of avarice. The object of the thrifty 
man in money matters is so to lay out his 
money as to get the best possible result from 
his expenditure ; the object of the avaricious 
man is to spend no more money than he can 
help. An artist who taught me painting often 
repeated a piece of advice which is valuable 
in other things than art, and which I try to 
remember whenever patience fails. He used 
to say to me, ' ' Give it time. " The mere length 
of time that we bestow upon our work is in 
itself a most important element of success, 
and if I object to the use of languages that we , 
only half know, it is not because it takes us a 
long time to get through a chapter, but be- 
cause we are compelled to think about syntax 
and conjugations which did not in the least 
occupy the mind of the author, when we 
ought rather to be thinking about those things 
which did occupy his mind, about the events 
which he narrated, or the characters that he 
imagined or described. There are, in truth, 
13 



194 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

only two ways of impressing anything on the 
memory, either intensity or duration. If you 
saw a man struck down by an assassin, you 
would remember the occurrence all your life ; 
but to remember with equal vividness a pict- 
ure of the assassination, you would probably 
be obliged to spend a month or two in copying 
it. The subjects of our studies rarely produce 
an intensity of emotion sufficient to ensure 
perfect recollection without the expenditure 
of time. And when your object is not to 
learn, but to produce, it is well to bear in mind 
that everything requires a certain definite 
time-outlay, which cannot be reduced without 
an inevitable injury to quality. A most ex- 
perienced artist, a man of the very rarest ex- 
ecutive ability, wrote to me the other day 
about a set of designs I had suggested. " If 
I could but get the TIME," — the large capitals 
are his own, — "for, somehow or other, let a 
design be never so studiously simple in the 
masses, it ivill fill itself as it goes on, like the 
weasel in the fable who got into the meal-tub ; 
and when the pleasure begins in attempting 
tone and mystery and intricacy, mvay go the 
hours at a gallop. " A well-known and very 
successful English dramatist wrote to me: 
■ ' When I am hurried, and have undertaken 
more work than I can execute in the time at 
my disposal, I am always perfectly paralyzed. J » 
There is another side to this subject which 
deserves attention. Some men work best un- 
der the sense of pressure. Simple compres- 
sion evolves heat from iron, so that there is 



THE POWEB OF TIME. 195 

a flash of fire when a ball hits the side of an 
ironclad. The same law seems to hold good 
in the intellectual life of man, whenever he 
needs the stimulus of extraordinary excite- 
ment. Eossini positively advised a young 
composer never to write his overture until 
the evening before the first performance. 
"Nothing," he said, ' ' excites inspiration like 
necessity ; the presence of a copyist waiting 
for your work, and the view of a manager in 
despair tearing out his hair by handf uls. In 
Italy in my time all the managers were bald 
at thirty. I composed the overture to ' Oth- 
ello ' in a small room in the Barbaja Palace, 
where the baldest and most ferocious of man- 
agers had shut me up by force with nothing 
but a dish of maccaroni, and the threat that I 
should not leave the place alive until I had 
written the last note. I wrote the overture 
to the ' G-azza Ladra' on the day of the first 
performance, in the upper loft of the La 
Scala, where I had been confined by the man- 
ager, under the guard of four scene-shifters 
who had orders to throw my text out of the 
window bit by bit to copyists, who were wait- 
ing below to transcribe- it. In default of 
music I was to be thrown out myself." 

I have quoted the best instance known to 
me of this voluntary seeking after pressure, 
but striking as it is, even this instance 
does not weaken what I said before. For 
observe, that although Rossini deferred the 
composition of his overture till the evening 
before the first performance, he knew very 



196 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

well that he could do it thoroughly in the 
time. He was like a clever schoolboy who 
knows that he can learn his lesson in the 
quarter of an hour before the class begins ; or 
he was like an orator who knows that he can 
deliver a passage and compose at the same 
time the one which is to follow, so that he 
prefers to arrange his speech in the presence 
of his audience. Since Rossini always al- 
lowed himself all the time that was necessary 
for what he had to do, it is clear that he did 
not sin against the great time-necessity. The 
express which can travel from London to 
Edinburgh in a night may leave the English 
metropolis on Saturday evening although it 
is due in Scotland on Sunday, and still act 
with the strictest consideration about time. 
The blameable error lies in miscalculation, 
and not in rapidity of performance. 

Nothing wastes time like miscalculation. It 
negatives all results. It is the parent of in- 
completeness, the great author of the Unfin- 
ished and the Unserviceable. Almost every 
intellectual man has laid out great masses of 
time on five or six different branches of knowl- 
edge which are not- of the least use to him, 
simply because he has not carried them far 
enough, and could not carry them far enough 
in the time he had to give. Yet this might have 
been ascertained at the beginning by the sim- 
plest arithmetical calculation. The experience 
of students in all departments of knowledge 
has quite definitely ascertained the amount of 
time that is necessary for success in them, and 



THE POWEB OF TIME. 197 

the successful student can at once inform the 
aspirant how far he is likely to travel along 
the road. What is the use, to anybody, of 
having just enough skill to feel vexed with 
himself that he has no more, and yet angry at 
other people for not admiring the little that he 
possesses? 

I wish to direct your attention to a cause 
which more than any other produces disap- 
pointment in ordinary intellectual pursuits. 
It is this. People can often calculate with the 
utmost accuracy what they can accomplish in 
ten minutes or even in ten hours, and yet the 
very same persons will make the most absurd 
miscalculations about what they can accom- 
plish in ten years. There is of course a rea- 
son for this : if there were not, so many sensi- 
ble people would not suffer from the delusion. 
The reason is, that owing to the habits of hu- 
man life there is a certain elasticity in large 
spaces of time that include nights, and meal- 
times, and holidays. We fancy that we shall 
be able, by working harder than we have been 
accustomed to work, and by stealing hours 
from all the different kinds of rest and amuse- 
ment, to accomplish far more in the ten years 
that are to come than we have ever actually 
accomplished in the same space. And to a 
certain extent this may be very true. No doubt 
a man whose mind has become seriously aware 
of the vast importance of economizing his time 
will economize it better than he did in the days 
before the new conviction came to him. No 
doubt, after skill in our work has been con- 



IDS THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

firmed, we shall perform it with increased 
speed. But the elasticity of time is rather 
that of leather than that of india-rubber. 
There is certainly a degree of elasticity, but 
the degree is strictly limited. The true mas- 
ter of time-thrift would be no more liable to 
illusion about years than about hours, and 
would act as prudently when working for re- 
mote results as for near ones. 

Not that we ought to work as if we were al- 
ways under severe pressure. Little books are 
occasionally published in which we are told 
that it is a sin to lose a minute. From the in- 
tellectual point of view this doctrine is simply 
stupid. What the Philistines call wasted 
time is often rich in the most varied experience 
to the intelligent. If all that we have learned 
in idle moments could be suddenly expelled 
from our minds by some chemical process, it 
is probable that they would be worth very lit- 
tle afterwards. What, after such a process, 
would have remained to Shakespeare, Scott, 
Cervantes, Thackeray, Dickens, Hogarth, 
Goldsmith, Moliere? When these great stu- 
dents of human nature were learning most, 
the sort of people who write the foolish little 
books just alluded to would have wanted to 
send them home to the dictionary or the 
desk. Topfter and Claude Tillier, both men of 
delicate and observant genius, attached the 
greatest importance to hours of idleness. 
Topff er said that a year of downright loitering 
was a desirable element in a liberal education ; 
whilst Claude Tillier went even farther, and 



THE POWER OF TIME, J 99 

boldly affirmed that ' ' le temps le mieux em- 
ploye est celui que Ton perd." 

Let us not think too contemptuously of the 
miscalculators of time, since not one of us is 
exempt from their folly. We have all made 
miscalculations, or more frequently have sim- 
ply omitted calculation altogether, preferring 
childish illusion to a manly examination of 
realities; and afterwards as life advances 
another illusion steals over us not less vain 
than the early one, but bitter as that was 
sweet. We now begin to reproach ourselves 
with all the opportunities that have been 
neglected, and now our folly is to imagine 
that we might have done impossible wonders 
if we had only exercised a little resolution. 
We might have been thorough classical schol- 
ars, and spoken all the great modern lan- 
guages, and written immortal books, and 
made a colossal fortune. Miscalculations 
again, and these the most imbecile of all ; for 
the youth who forgets to reason in the glow 
of happiness and hope, is wiser than the man . 
who overestimates what was once possible 
that he may embitter the days which remain 
to him. 



200 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER III. 

TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE 
HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH LITERA- 
TURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READING WAS 
LIMITED. 

Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labors of the Germans 
— Business may be set off as the equivalent to one of their 
pursuits — Necessity for regularity in the economy of time 
— What may be done in two hours a day — Evils of inter- 
ruption — Florence Nightingale — Real nature of interrup- 
tion—Instance from the Apology of Socrates. 

In the charming and precious letters of 
Victor Jacquemont, a man whose life was 
dedicated to culture, and who not only lived 
for it, but died for it, there is a passage about 
the intellectual labors of Germans, which 
takes due account of the expenditure of time. 
"Comme j'etais etonne," he says, u de la 
prodigieuse variete et de Tetendue de connais- 
sances des Allemands, je demandai un jour a 
Tun de mes amis, Saxon de naissance et Tun 
des premiers geologues de TEurope, comment 
ses compatriotes s'y prenaient pour savoir 
tant de choses. Voici sa reponse, a peu pres : 
4 Un Allemand (moi excepte qui suis le plus 
paresseux des hommes) se leve de bonne heure, 
ete et hiver, a cinq heures environ. II tra- 
vaille quatre heures avant le dejeuner, fumant 
quelquefois pendant tout ce temps, sans que 
cela nuise a son application. Son dejeuner 
dure une demi-heure, et il reste, apres, une 
autre demi-heure a causer avec sa femme et a 



THE POWER OF TIME. 201 

faire jouer ses enfants. II retourne au travail 
pour six heures ; dine sans se presser ; fume 
une heure apres le diner, jouant encore avec 
ses enfants; et avant de se coucher il tra- 
vaille encore quatre heures. II recommence 
tous les jours, ne sortant jamais. — Voila,' me 
dit mon ami, ' comment Oersted, le plus grand 
physieien de rAllemagne, en est aussi le plus 
grand medecin ; voila comment Kant le met- 
aphysicien etait un des plus savants astrono- 
mes de TEurope, et comment Goethe, qui en 
est actuellement le premier litterateur, dans 
presque tous les genres, et le plus fecond, est 
excellent botaniste, mineraiogiste, physi- 
eien."'* 

Here is something to encourage, and some' 
thing to discourage you at the same time. 

* " Being astonished at the prodigious variety and at the 
extent of knowledgepossessed by the Germans, I begged one 
of my friends, Saxon by birth, and one of the foremost geol- 
ogists in Europe, to tell me how his countrymen managed to 
know so many things. Here is his answer, nearly in his own 
words: — 'A German (except myself, who am the idlest of 
men) gets up early, summer and whiter, at about five o'clock; 
He works four hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking 
all the time, which does not interfere with his application. 
His breakfast lasts half an hour, and he remains, afterwards, 
another half -hour talking with his wife and playing with his 
children. He returns to his work for six hours, dines without 
hurrying himself, smokes an hour after dinner, playing again 
with his children, and before he goes to bed he works four 
hours more. He begins again every day, and never goes out. 
This is how it comes to pass that Oersted, the greatest nat- 
ural philosopher in Germany, is at the same time the greatest 
physician ; this is how Kant the metaphysician was one of 
the most learned astronomers in Europe, and how Goethe, 
who is at present the first and most fertile author in Germany 
in almost all kinds of literature, is an excellent botanist, min- 
eralogist, and natural philosopher.' " 



202 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

The number of hours which these men have 
given in order to become what they were, is 
so great as to be past all possibility of imita- 
tion by a man occupied in business. It is clear 
that, with your counting-house to occupy you 
during the best hours of every day, you can 
never labor for your intellectual culture with 
that unremitting application which these men 
have given for theirs. But, on the other hand, 
you will perceive that these extraordinary 
workers have hardly ever been wholly dedi- 
cated to one pursuit, and the reason for this 
in most cases is clear. Men who go through 
a prodigious amount of work feel the necessity 
for varying it. The greatest intellectual work- 
ers I have known personally have varied their 
studies as Kant and Goethe did, often taking 
up subjects of the most opposite kinds, as for 
instance imaginative literature and the higher 
mathematics, the critical and practical study 
of fine art and the natural sciences, music, 
and political economy. The class of intellects 
which arrogate to themselves the epithet 
"practical," but which we call Philistine, 
always oppose this love of variety, and have 
an unaffected contempt for it, but these are 
matters beyond their power of judgment. 
They cannot know the needs of the intellectual 
life, because they have never lived it. The 
practice of all the greatest intellects has been 
to cultivate themselves variously, and if they 
have always done so, it must be because they 
have felt the need of it. 
The encouraging inference which you may 



THE POWER OF TIME, 203 

draw from this in reference to your own case 
is that, since all intellectual men have had 
more than one pursuit, you may set off your 
business against the most absorbing of their 
pursuits, and for the rest be still almost as 
rich in time as they have been. You may 
study literature as some painters have studied 
it, or science as some literary men have 
studied it. 

The first step is to establish a regulated 
economy of your time, so that, without inter- 
fering with a due attention to business and to 
health, you may get two clear hours every day 
for reading of the best kind. It is not much, 
some men would tell you that it is not enough, 
but I purposely fix the. expenditure of time at 
a low figure because I want it to be always 
practicable consistently with all the duties 
and necessary pleasures of your life. If I told 
you to read four hours every day, I know be- 
forehand what w^ould be the consequence. 
You would keep the rule for three days, by 
an effort, then some engagement would occur 
to break it, and you would have no rule at all. 
And please observe that the two hours are to 
be given quite regularly, because, when the 
time given is not much, regularity is quite 
essential. Two hours a day, regularly, make 
more than seven hundred hours in a year, and 
in seven hundred hours, wisely and uninter- 
ruptedly occupied, much may be done in any- 
thing. 

Permit me to insist upon that word unin- 
terruptedly. Few people realize the full evil 



204 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE 

of an interruption, few people know all that is 
implied by it. After warning nurses against 
the evils of interruption, Florence Nightin- 
gale says : — 

"These things are not fancy. If we con- 
sider that, with sick as with well, every 
thought decomposes some nervous matter — 
that decomposition as well as re-composition 
of nervous matter is always going on, and 
more quickly with the sick than with the 
well, — that to obtrude another thought upon 
the brain whilst it is in the act of destroying 
nervous matter by thinking, is calling upon it 
to make a new exertion — if we consider these 
things, which are facts, not fancies, we shall 
remember that we are doing positive injury 
by interrupting, by startling a ' fanciful ' per- 
son, as it is called. Alas, it is no fancy. 

' < If the invalid is forced by his avocations to 
continue occupations requiring much think- 
ing, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a 
patient suffering under delirium or stupor 
you may suffocate him by giving him his 
food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently 
with a spoon and thus attract his attention, he 
will swallow the food unconsciously, but with 
perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If 
you offer it a thought, especially one requir- 
ing a decision, abruptly, you do it a real, not 
fanciful, injury. Never speak to a sick per- 
son suddenly; but, at the same time, do not 
keep his expectation on the tiptoe." 

To this you will already have answered, 
mentally, that you are not a patient suffering 



THE POWER OF TIME. 205 

under either delirium or stupor, and that no- 
body needs to rub your lips gently with a 
spoon. But Miss Nightingale does not con- 
sider interruption baneful to sick persons 
only. 

" This rule indeed," she continues, " applies 
to the well quite as much as to the sick. I 
have never known persons ivho exposed them- 
selves for years to constant interruption who 
did not muddle away their intellects by it at 
last. The process, with them, may be accom- 
plished without pain. With the sick, pain 
gives warning of the injury. " 

Interruption is an evil to the reader which 
must be estimated very differently from ordi- 
nary business interruptions. The great ques- 
tion about interruption is not whether it com- 
pels you to divert your attention to other 
facts, but whether it compels you to tune 
your whole mind to another diapason. Shop- 
keepers are incessantly compelled to change 
the subject; a stationer is asked for note- 
paper one minute, for sealing-wax the next, 
and immediately afterwards for a particular 
sort of steel pen. The subjects of his thoughts 
are changed very rapidly, but the general 
state of his mind is not changed ; he is always 
strictly in his shop, as much mentally as 
physically. When an attorney is interrupted 
in the study of a case by the arrival of a cli- 
ent who asks him questions about another 
case, the change is more difficult to bear ; yet 
even here the general state of mind, the legal 
state of mind, is not interfered with, But 



206 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

i 

now suppose a reader perfectly absorbed in 
his author, an author belonging very likely 
to another age and another civilization en- 
tirely different from ours. Suppose that you 
are reading the Defence of Socrates in Plato, 
and have the whole scene before you as in a 
picture: the tribunal of the Five Hundred, 
the pure Greek architecture, the interested 
Athenian public, the odious Melitus, the en- 
vious enemies, the beloved and grieving 
friends whose names are dear to us, and im- 
mortal ; and in the centre you see one figure 
draped like a poor man, in cheap and com- 
mon cloth, that he wears winter and summer, 
with a face plain to downright ugliness, but 
an air of such genuine courage and self-pos- 
session that no acting could imitate it; and 
you hear the firm voice say ng— 

Tifidrat & ovv jlloc dvrjp Oavdrov 

Ei€V* 

You are just beginning the splendid para 
graph where Socrates condemns himself to 
maintenance in the Prytaneum, and if you 
can only be safe from interruption till it is 
finished, you will have one of those minutes 
of noble pleasure which are the rewards of 
xntellectual toil. But if you are reading in 
the daytime in a house where there are wom- 
en and children, or where people can fasten 
upon you for pottering details of business, 
you may be sure that you will not be able to 
get to the end of the passage without in some 

* The man. then, judges me worthy of death. Be it so. 



T1IE POWER OF TIME. 207 

way or other being rudely awakened from 
your dream, and suddenly brought back into 
the common world. The loss intellectually is 
greater than any one who had not suffered 
from it could imagine. People think that an 
interruption is merely the unhooking of an 
electric chain, and that the current will flow, 
when the chain is hooked on again, just as it 
did before. To the intellectual and imagina- 
tive student an interruption is not that ; it is 
the destruction of a picture. 



LETTER IV. 

TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN. 

People who like +o be hurried— Sluggish temperaments gain 
vivacity under pressure— Routine work may be done at in- 
creased speed — The higher intellectual work cannot be done 
hurriedly — The art of avoiding hurry consists in Selection — 
How it was practised by a good landscape painter— Selec- 
tion in reading and writing— Some studies allow the play of 
selection more than others do— Languages permit it less 
than natural sciences — Difficulty of using selection in the 
fulfilment of literary engagements. 

So you have got yourself into that pleasant 
condition which is about as agreeable, and as 
favorable to fruitful study and observation, 
as the condition of an ove^-driven cab-horse ! 

Very indolent men, who will not work at 
all unless under the pressure of immediate 
urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually 
like to be hurried ; but although certain kinds 
of practical work which have become per- 
fectly easy from habit may be got through at 
a great pace when the workman feels that 



208 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

there is an immediate necessity for effort, it 
is certainly not true that hurry is favorable 
to sound study of any kind. Work which 
merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged 
on occasionally at express speed without any 
perceptible injury to the quality of it. A 
clever violinist can play a passage prestissimo 
as correctly as if he played it adagio ; a bank- 
er's clerk can count money very rapidly with 
positively less risk of error than if he counted 
it as you and I do. A person of sluggish tem- 
perament really gains in vivacity when he is 
pressed for time, and becomes during those 
moments of excited energy a clearer-headed 
and more able person than he is under ordi- 
nary circumstances. It is therefore not sur- 
prising that he should find himself able to ac- 
complish more under the great stimulus of an 
immediate necessity than he is able to do in 
the dulness of his every -day existence. Great 
prodigies of labor have been performed in 
this way to avert impending calamity, espe- 
cially by military officers in critical times like 
those of the Sepoy rebellion ; and in the ob- 
scurer lives of tradesmen, immense exertions 
are often made to avert the danger of bank- 
ruptcy, when without the excitement of a se- 
rious anxiety of that kind the tradesman 
would not feel capable of more than a moder- 
ate and reasonable degree of attention to his 
affairs. But notwithstanding the many in- 
stances of this kind which might be cited, 
and the many more which might easily be 
collected, the truth remains that the highest 



THE POWER OF TIME. 209 

kinds of intellectual labor can hardly ever be 
properly performed when the degree of press- 
ure is in the least excessive. You may, for 
example, if you have the kind of ability 
which makes a good journalist, write an ef- 
fective leader with your watch lying on the 
table, and finish it exactly when the time is 
up ; but if you had the kind of ability which 
makes a good poet, you could not write any- 
thing like highly-finished poetry against time. 
It is equally clear that scientific discovery, 
which, though it may flash suddenly upon 
the mind of the discoverer, is always the re- 
sult of long brooding over the most patient 
observations, must come at its own moments, 
and cannot be commanded. The activity of 
poets and discoverers would be paralyzed by 
exigencies which stimulate the activity of 
soldiers and men of business. The truth is, 
that intelligence and energy are beneficially 
stimulated by pressure from without, where- 
as the working of the higher intellect is im- 
peded by it, and that to such a degree that in 
times of the greatest pressure the high intel- 
lectual life is altogether suspended, to leave 
free play to the lower but more immediately 
serviceable intelligence. 

This being so, it becomes a necessary part 
of the art of intellectual living so to order our 
work as to shield ourselves if possible, at 
least during a certain portion of our time, 
from the evil consequences of hurry. The 
whole secret lies in a single word — Selection. 
An excellent landscape painter told me that 
14 



210 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

whatever he had to do, he always took the 
greatest pains to arrange his work so as 
never to have his tranquillity disturbed by 
haste. His system, which is quite applicable 
to many other things than landscape paint- 
ing, was based on the principle of selection. 
He always took care to determine beforehand 
how much time he could devote to each 
sketch or study, and then, from the mass of 
natural facts before him, selected the most 
valuable facts which could be recorded in the 
time at his disposal. But however short that 
time might be, he was always perfectly cool 
and deliberate in the employment of it. In- 
deed this coolness and his skill in selection 
helped each other mutually, for he chose 
wisely because he was cool, and he had time- 
to be cool by reason of the wisdom of his 
selection. In his little memoranda, done in 
five minutes, the lines were laid just as de- 
liberately as the tints on an elaborate picture ; 
the difference being in choice only, not in 
speed. 

Now if we apply this art of selection to all 
our labors it will give us much of that land- 
scape painter's enviable . coolness, and enable 
us to work more satisfactorily. Suppose that 
instead of painting and sketching we have to 
do a great deal of reading and writing: the 
art is to select the reading which will be most 
useful to our purpose, and, in writing, to se- 
lect the words which will express our mean- 
ing with the greatest clearness in a little 
space. The art of reading is to skip judi- 



THE PO WEB OF TIME. 211 

ciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in 
these days, when we have the results of them 
in cur modern culture without going over the 
ground again. And even of the books we de- 
cide to read, there are almost always large 
portions which do not concern us, and which 
we are sure to forget the day after we have 
read them. The art is to skip all that does 
not concern us, whilst missing nothing that 
we really need, No external guidance can 
teach us this ; for nobody but ourselves can 
guess what the needs of our intellect may be. 
But let us select with decisive firmness, inde- 
pendently of other people's advice, independ- 
ently of the authority of custom. In every 
newspaper that comes to hand there is a little 
bit that we ought to read ; the art is to find 
that little bit, and waste no time over the 
rest. 

Some studies permit the exercise of selec- 
tion better than others do. A language, once 
undertaken, permits very little selection in- 
deed, since you must know the whole vocab- 
ulary, or nearly so, to be able to read and 
speak. On the other hand, the natural sci- 
ences permit the most prudent exercise of se- 
lection. For example, in botany you may 
study as few plants as you choose. 

In writing, the art of selection consists in 
giving the utmost effect to expression in the 
fewest words; but of this art I say little, for 
who can contend against an inevitable trade- 
necessity? Almost every author of ordinary 
skill could, when pressed for time, find a 



212 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

briefer expression for his thoughts, but the 
real difficulty in fulfilling literary engage- 
ments does not lie in the expression of the 
thought, it lies in the sufficiently rapid pro- 
duction of a certain quantity of copy. For 
this purpose I fear that selection would be of 
very little use — of no more use, in fact, than 
in any other branch of manufacture where (if 
a certain standard is kept up to) quantity in 
sale is more important than quality of mate- 
rial. 



LETTER V. 

TO A FRIEND WHO, THOUGH HE HAD NO PRO- 
FESSION, COULD NOT FIND TIME FOR HIS VA- 
RIOUS INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. 

Compensations resulting from the necessity for time— Oppor- 
tunity only exists for us so far as we have time to make 
use of it— This or that, not this and that— Danger of ap- 
parently unlimited opportunities— The intellectual train- 
ing of our ancestors— Montaigne the Essayist— Reliance 
upon the compensations. 

It has always seemed to me that the great 
and beautiful principle of compensation is 
more clearly seen in the distribution and 
effects of time than in anything else within 
the scope of our experience. The good use of 
one opportunity very frequently compensates 
us for the absence of another, and it does so 
because opportunity is itself so dependent 
upon time that, although the best opportuni- 
ties may apparently be presented to us, we 



TEE PO WEE OF TIME. 21Z 

can make no use of them unless we are able 
to give them the time that they require. You, 
who have the best possible opportunities for 
culture, find a certain sadness and disappoint- 
ment because you cannot avail yourself of all 
of them ; but the truth is, that opportunity 
only exists for us just so far as we are able to 
make use of it, and our power to do so is 
often nothing but a question of time. If our 
days are well employed we are sure to have 
done some good thing which we should have 
been compelled to neglect if we had been oc- 
cupied about anything else. Hence every 
genuine worker has rich compensations 
which ought to console him amply for his 
shortcomings, and to enable him to meet 
comparisons without fear. 

Those who aspire to the intellectual life, but 
have no experience of its difficulties, very fre- 
quently envy men so favorably situated as 
you are. It seems to them that all the world's 
knowledge is accessible to you, and that you 
have simply to cull its fruits as we gather 
grapes in a vineyard. They forget the power 
of Time, and the restrictions which Time im- 
poses. "This or that, not this and that," is 
the rule to which all of us have to submit, and 
it strangely equalizes the destinies of men. 
The time given to the study of one thing is 
withdrawn from the study of another, and the 
hours of the day are limited alike for all of us. 
How difficult it is to reconcile the interests of 
our different pursuits ! Indeed it seems like 
a sort of polygamy to have different pursuits. 



214 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

It is natural to think of them as jealous wives 
tormenting some Mormon prophet. 

There is great danger in apparently unlim* 
ited opportunities, and a splendid compensa- 
tion for those who are confined by circum- 
stances to a narrow but fruitful field. The 
Englishman gets more civilization out of a 
farm and a garden than the Red Indian out of 
the space encircled by his horizon. Our cult- 
ure gains in thoroughness what it loses in ex- 
tent. 

This consideration goes far to explain the fact 
that although our ancestors were so much less 
favorably situated than we are, they often got 
as good an intellectual training from the liter- 
ature that was accessible to them, as we from 
our vaster stores. We live in an age of es- 
sayists, and yet what modern essayist writes 
better than old Montaigne ? All that a thought- 
ful and witty writer needs for the sharpening 
of his intellect, Montaigne found in the ancient 
literature that was accessible to him, and in 
the life of the age he lived in. Born in our own 
century, he would have learned many other 
things, no doubt, and read many other books, 
but these would have absorbed the hours that 
he employed not less fruitfully with the 
authors that he loved in the little library up 
in the third story of his tower, as he tells us, 
where he could see all his books at once, set 
upon five rows of shelves round about him. 
In earlier life he bought £ ' this sort of furni- 
ture" for u ornament and outward show," 
but afterwards quite abandoned that, and 



THE POWER OF TIME. 215 

procured such volumes only "as supplied his 
own need." 

To supply our own need, within the narrow 
limits of the few and transient hours that we 
can call our own, is enough for the wise every- 
where, as it was for Montaigne in his tower. 
Let us resolve to do as much as that, not 
more, and then rely upon the golden compen- 
sations. 

Note.—" Supposing that the executive and critical powers 
always exist in some correspondent degree in the same per- 
son, still they cannot be cultivated to the same extent. The 
attention required for the development of a theory is necessa- 
rily withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the time 
devoted to the realization of a form is lost to the solution of 
a problem."— Mr. Ruskin, in the preface to the third volume 
of "Modern Painters." 

In the case of Mr. Ruskin, in that of Mr. Dante Rossetti, 
and in all cases where the literary and artistic gifts are natur- 
ally pretty evenly balanced, the preponderance of an hour a 
day given to one or the other class of studies may have set- 
tled the question whether the student was to be chiefly artist 
or chiefly author. The enormous importance of the distribu- 
tion of time is never more clearly manifested than in cases of 
this kind. Mr. Ruskin might certainly have attained rank as 
a painter, Rossetti might have been as prolific in poetry as 
he is excellent. What these gifted men are now is not so 
much a question of talent as of time. In like manner the 
question whether Ingres was to be known as a painter or as a 
violinist was settled by the employment of hours rather than 
by any preponderance of faculty. 



PART V. 

THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 



LETTER I. 

TO A VERY RICH STUDENT. 

The author of " Vathek "—The double temptation of wealth^ 
Rich men tempted to follow occupations in which their 
wealth is useful— Pressure of social duties on the rich— 
The Duchess of Orleans— The rich man's time not his 
own — The rich may help the general intellectual advance- 
ment by the exercise of patronage— Dr. Carpenter— Franz 
Wcepke. 

It has always seemed to me a very remark- 
able and noteworthy circumstance that al- 
though Mr. Beckford, the author of "Vat- 
hek," produced in his youth a story which 
bears all the signs of true inventive genius, he 
never produced anything in after-life which 
posterity cares to preserve. I read "Vathek" 
again quite recently, to see how far my early 
enthusiasm for it might have been due to 
that passion for orientalism which reigned 
amongst us many years ago, but this fresh 
perusal left an impression which only genius 
leaves. Beckford really had invention, and 
an extraordinary narrative power. That 
such faculties, after having once revealed 
themselves, should contentedly have re- 
mained dormant ever afterwards, is one of 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 217 

the most curious facts in the history of the 
human mind, and it is the more curious that 
Beckford lived to a very advanced age. 

Beckf ord's case appears to have heen one of 
those in which great wealth diminishes or 
wholly paralyzes the highest energy of the 
intellect, leaving the lower energies free to 
exert less noble kinds of activity. A refined 
self-indulgence became the habit of his life, 
and he developed simply into a dilettant. 
Even his love for the fine arts did not rise 
above the indulgence of an elegant and culti- 
vated taste. Although he lived at the very 
time most favorable to the appearance of a 
great critic in architecture and painting, the 
time of a great architectural revival and of 
the growth of a vigorous and independent 
school of contemporary art, he exercised no 
influence beyond that of a wealthy virtuoso. 
His love of the beautiful began and ended in 
simple personal gratification; it led to no 
noble labor, to no elevating severity of disci- 
pline. Englishman though he was, he filled 
his Oriental tower with masterpieces from 
Italy and Holland, only to add form and color 
to the luxuries of his reverie, behind his gilded 
lattices. 

And when he raised that other tower at 
Fonthill, and the slaves of the lamp toiled at 
it by torchlight to gratify his Oriental impa- 
tience, he exercised no influence upon the con- 
fusion of his epoch more durable than that 
hundred yards of masonry which sank into a 
shapeless heap whilst as yet Azrael spared its 



218 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

author. He to whom Nature and Fortune 
had been so prodigal of their gifts, he whom 
Keynolds painted and Mozart instructed, who 
knew the poets of seven literatures, culling 
their jewels like flowers in seven enchanted 
gardens— he to whom the palaces of knowl- 
edge all opened their golden gates even in his 
earliest youth, to whom were also given riches 
and length of days, for whom a thousand 
craftsmen toiled in Europe and a thousand 
slaves beyond the sea,* — what has this gifted 
mortal left as the testimony of his power, as 
the trace of his fourscore years upon the earth ? 
Only the reminiscence of a vague splendor, 
like the fast-fading recollection of a cloud 
that burned at sunset, and one small gem of 
intellectual creation that lives like a tiny star. 
If wealth had only pleasure to offer as a 
temptation from intellectual labor, its influ- 
ence would be easier to resist. Men of the 
English race are often grandly strong in resist- 
ance to every form of voluptuousness ; the race 
is fond of comfort and convenience, but it does 
not sacrifice its energy to enervating self-in- 
dulgence. There is, however, another order 
of temptations in great wealth, to which Eng- 
lishmen not only yield, but yield with a satis- 
fied conscience, even with a sense of obedience 



* This sounds like a poetical exaggeration, but it is less 
than the bare truth. There were fifteen hundred slaves on 
two West Indian estates that Beckf ord lost in a lawsuit. It 
is quite certain, considering his lavish expenditure, that fully 
a thousand men must have worked for the maintenance of 
his luxury in Europe. So much for his command of labor. 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 219 

to duty. Wealth carries pleasure in her left 
hand, but in her right she bears honor and 
power. The rich man feels that he can do so 
much by the mere exercise of his command 
over the labor of others, and so little by any 
unaided labor of his own, that he is always 
strongly tempted to become, not only phys- 
ically but intellectually, a director of work 
rather that a workman. Even his modesty, 
when he is modest, tends to foster his reliance 
on others rather than himself. All that he 
tries to do is done so much better by those 
who make it their profession, that he is al- 
ways tempted to fall back upon his paying 
power as his most satisfactory and effective 
force. There are cases in which this tempta- 
tion is gloriously overcome, where men of 
great wealth compel every one to acknowledge 
that their money is nothing more than a help 
to their higher life, like the charger that bore 
Wellington at Waterloo, serving him indeed 
usefully, but not detracting from the honor 
which is his due. But in these cases the life 
is usually active or administrative rather than 
intellectual. The rich man does not generally 
feel tempted to enter upon careers in which 
his command over labor is not an evident ad- 
vantage, and this because men naturally seek 
those fields in which all their superiorities 
tell. Even the well known instance of Lord 
Rosse can scarcely be considered an exception 
to this rule, for although he was eminent in a 
science which has been followed by poor men 
with great distinction, his wealth was of use 



220 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

in the construction of his colossal telescope, 
which gave him a clear advantage over 
merely professional contemporaries. 

Besides this natural desire to pursue careers 
in which their money may lessen the number 
of competitors, the rich are often diverted 
from purely intellectual pursuits by the social 
duties of their station, duties which it is im- 
possible to avoid and difficult to keep within 
limits. The Duchess of Orleans (mother of 
the present Count of Paris) arranged her time 
with the greatest care so as to reserve a little of 
it for her own culture in uninterrupted soli- 
tude. By an exact system, and the exercise 
of the rarest firmness, she contrived to steal 
half an hour here and an hour there — enough 
no doubt, when employed as she employed 
them, to maintain her character as a very dis- 
tinguished lady, yet still far from sufficient 
for the satisfactory pursuit of any great art 
or science. If it be difficult for the rich man 
to enter into the kingdom of heaven, it is also 
difficult for him to secure that freedom from 
interruption which is necessary to fit him for 
his entrance into the Intellectual Kingdom. 
He can scarcely allow himself to be absorbed 
in any great study, when he reflects on all the 
powerful means of social influence which he 
is suffering to lie idle. He is sure to possess 
by inheritance, or to have acquired in obedi- 
ence to custom, a complicated and expensive 
machinery for the pleasures and purposes of 
society. There is game to be shot ; there are 
hunters to be exercised ; great houses to be 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 221 

filled with guests. So much is expected of the 
rich man, both in business and in pleasure, 
that his time is not his own, and he could not 
quit his station if he would. And yet the In- 
tellectual Life, in its fruitful perfection, re- 
quires, I do not say the complete abandon- 
ment of the world, but it assuredly requires 
free and frequent spaces of labor in tranquil 
solitude, "retreats " like those commanded by 
the Church of Rome, but with more of study 
and less of contemplation. 

It would be useless to ask you to abdicate 
your power, and retreat into some hermitage 
with a library and a laboratory, without a 
thought of returning to your pleasant hall in 
Yorkshire and your house in May fair. You 
will not sell all and follow the e L Light, but 
there is a life which you may powerfully en- 
courage, yet only partially share. Notwith- 
standing the increased facilities for earning 
a living which this age offers to the intellect- 
ual, the time that they are often compelled to 
give to the satisfaction of common material 
necessities is so much time withdrawn from 
the work which they alone can do. It is a la- 
mentable waste of the highest and rarest kind 
of energy to compel minds that are capable of 
original investigation, of discovery, to occupy 
themselves in that mere vulgarization of 
knowledge, in popular lecturing and litera- 
ture, which could be done just as efficiently 
by minds of a common order. It is an error 
of the present age to believe that the time for 
what is called patronage is altogether passed 



222 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

away. Let me mention two instances to the 
contrary: one in which kindly help would 
have saved fifteen years of a noble life; 
another in which that kindly help did actual- 
ly permit a man of exceptional endowment 
and equally exceptional industry to pursue 
investigations for which no other human be- 
ing was so well qualified, and which were en- 
tirely incompatible with the earning of the 
daily bread. Dr. Carpenter has lately told us 
that, finding it impossible to unite the work of 
a general practitioner with the scientific re- 
searches upon which his heart was set, he 
gave up nine-tenths of his time for twenty 
years to popular lecturing and writing, in or- 
der that he might exist and devote the other 
tenth to science. "Just as he was breaking 
down from the excessive strain upon mind 
and body which this life involved, an appoint- 
ment was offered to Dr. Carpenter which gave 
him competence and sufficient leisure for the 
investigations which he has conducted to such 
important issues." Suppose that during those 
twenty years of struggle he had broken down 
like many another only a little less robust — 
what then? A mind lost to his country and 
the world. And would it not have been hap- 
pier for him and for us if some of those men 
(of whom there are more in England than in 
any other land), who are so wealthy that 
their gold is positively a burden and an en- 
cumbrance, like too many coats in summer, 
had helped Dr. Carpenter at least a few years 
earlier, in some form that a man of high feel- 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 223 

ing might honorably accept? The other ex- 
ample that I shall mention is that of Franz 
Woepke, the mathematician and orientalist. 
A modest pension, supplied by an Italia* 
prince who was interested in the history o\' 
mathematics, gave Woepke that peace which 
is incompatible with poverty, and enabled 
him to live grandly in his narrow lodging the 
noble intellectual life. Was not this rightly 
and well done, and probably a much more ef- 
fectual employment of the power of gold than 
if that Italian prince had added some rare 
manuscripts to his own library without hav- 
ing time or knowledge to decipher them? I 
cannot but think that the rich may serve the 
cause of culture best by a judicious exercise of 
patronage — unless, indeed, they have within 
themselves the sense of that irresistible voca- 
tion which made Humboldt use his fortune 
as the servant of his high ambition. The 
Humboldts never are too rich; they possess 
their gold and are not possessed by it, and 
they are exempt from the duty of aiding 
others because they themselves have a use 
for all their powers. 



224 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

LETTER II. 
TO A GENIUS CARELESS IN MONEY MATTERS. 

Danger of carelessness— Inconveniences of poverty unfavor- 
able to the Intellectual Life— Necessity advances men in 
industrial occupations, but disturbs and interrupts the 
higher intellectual life— Instances in science, literature, 
and art— Careers aided by wealth— Mr. Ruskin— De Saus- 
sure— Work spoiled by poverty in the doing— The central 
passion of men of ability is to do their work well — The 
want of money the most common hindrance to excellence 
of work — De Senaneour — Bossuet — Sainte-Beuve — Shelley 
— Wordsworth— Scott— Kepler— Tyclio Bralie— Schiller- 
Goethe— Case of an eminent English philosopher, and of a 
French writer of school-primers — Loss of time in making 
experiments on public taste — Surtout nepas trop ecrire— 
Auguste Comte— The reaction of the intellectual against 
money-making— Money the protector of the intellectual 
life. 

I have been anxious for you lately, and vent- 
ure to write to you about the reasons for this 
anxiety. 

You are neither extravagant nor self-indul- 
gent, yet it seems to me that your entire ab- 
sorption in the higher intellectual pursuits 
has produced in you, as it frequently does, a 
carelessness about material interests of all 
kinds which is by far the most dangerous of 
all tempers to the pecuniary well-being of a 
man. Sydney Smith declared that no fortune 
could stand that temper long, and that we are 
on the high road to ruin the moment we think 
ourselves rich enough to be careless. 

Let me observe, to begin with, that although 
the pursuit of wealth is not favorable to the 
intellectual life, the inconveniences of poverty 
are even less favorable to it. We are some- 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 225 

iimes lectured on the great benefits of neces- 
sity as a stimulant to exertion, and it is im- 
plied that comfortable people would go much 
farther on the road to distinction if they were 
made uncomfortable by having to think per- 
petually about money. Those who say this 
confound together the industry of the indus- 
trial and professional classes, and the labors 
of the more purely intellectual. It is clear 
that when the labor a man does is of such a 
nature that he will be paid for it in strict pro- 
portion to the time and effort he bestows, the 
need of money will be a direct stimulus to the 
best exertion he may be capable of. In all 
simple industrial occupations the need of 
money does drive a man forwards, and is 
often, when he feels it in early life, the very 
origin and foundation of his fortune. There 
exists, in such occupations, a perfect harmony 
between the present necessity and the ulti- 
mate purpose of the life. Wealth is the ob- 
ject of industry, and the first steps towards 
the possession of it are steps on the chosen 
path. The future captain of industry, who 
will employ thousands of workpeople and ac- 
cumulate millions of money, is going straight 
to his splendid future when he gets up at five 
in the morning to work in another person's 
factory. To learn to be a builder of steam-ves- 
sels, it is necessary, even when you begin 
with capital, to pass through the manual 
trades, and you will only learn them the bet- 
ter if the wages are necessary to your exist- 
ence. Poverty in these cases only makes an 
15 



226 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

intelligent man ground himself all the better 
in that stern practical training which is the 
basis of his future career. Well, therefore, 
may those who have reached distinguished 
success in fields of practical activity extol the 
teachings of adversity. If it is a necessary 
part of your education that you should ham- 
mer rivets inside a steam-boiler, it is as well 
that your early habits should not be over- 
dainty. So it is observed that horny hands, 
in the colonies, get gold into them sooner 
than white ones. 

Even in the liberal professions young men 
get on all the better for not being too comfort- 
ably off. If you have a comfortable private 
income to begin with, the meagre early re- 
wards of professional life will seem too paltry 
to be worth hard striving, and so you will 
very likely miss the more ample rewards of 
maturity, since the common road to success 
is nothing but a gradual increase. And you 
miss education at the same time, for practice 
is the best of professional educators, and 
many successful lawyers and artists have 
had scarcely any other training. The daily 
habit of affairs trains men for the active 
business of the world, and if the purpose of 
their lives is merely to do what they are do- 
ing or to command others to do the same 
things, the more closely circumstances tie 
them down to their work, the better. 

But in the higher intellectual pursuits the 
necessity for immediate earning has an en- 
tirely different result. It comes, not as an 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 227 

educator, but as an interruption or suspension 
of education. All intellectual lives, however 
much they may differ in the variety of their 
purposes, have at least this purpose in com- 
mon, that they are mainly devoted to self- 
education of one kind or another. An intel- 
lectual man who is forty years old is as much 
at school as an Etonian of fourteen, and if 
you set him to earn more money than that 
which comes to him without especial care 
about it, you interrupt his schooling, exactly 
as selfish parents used to do when they sent 
their young children to the factory and pre- 
vented them from learning to read. The idea 
of the intellectual life is an existence passed 
almost entirely in study, yet preserving the 
results of its investigations. A day's writing 
will usually suffice to record the outcome of 
a month's research. 

Necessity, instead of advancing your stud- 
ies, stops them. Whenever her harsh voice 
speaks it becomes your duty to shut your 
books, put aside your instruments, and do 
something that will fetch a price in the mar- 
ket. The man of science has to abandon the 
pursuit of a discovery to go and deliver a 
popular lecture a hundred miles off, for 
which he gets five pounds and his railway 
fare. The student of ancient literature has 
to read some feeble novel, and give three days 
of a valuable life to write an anonymous review 
which will bring him two pounds ten. The 
artist has to leave his serious picture to man- 
ufacture "pot-boilers," which will teach him 



223 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

nothing, but only spoil his hands and vitiate 
the public taste. The poet suspends his poena 
(which is promised to a publisher for Christ- 
mas, and will be spoiled in consequence by 
hurry at the last) in order to write newspa- 
per articles on subjects of which he has little 
knowledge and in which he takes no interest. 
And yet these are instances of those compar- 
atively happy and fortunate needy who are 
only compelled to suspend their intellectual 
life, and who can cheer themselves in their 
enforced labor with the hope of shortly re- 
newing it. What of those others who are 
pushed out of their path forever by the buf- 
fets of unkindly fortune? Many a fine intel- 
lect has been driven into the deep quagmire, 
and has struggled in it vainly till death came, 
which but for that grim necessity might have 
scaled the immortal mountains. 

This metaphor of the mountains has led me, 
by a natural association of ideas, to think of 
a writer who has added to our enjoyment of 
their beauty, and I think of him the more 
readily that his career will serve as an illus- 
tration — far better than any imaginary ca- 
reer — of the very subject which just now oc- 
cupies my mind. Mr. Ruskin is not only one 
of the best instances, but he is positively the 
very best [instance except the two Hum- 
boldts, of an intellectual career which has 
been greatly aided by material prosperity, 
and which would not have been possible with- 
out it. This does not in the le&st detract 
from the merit of the author of "Modern 






THE INFLUENCES OF MONET. 229 

Painters," for it needed a rare force of resolu- 
tion, or a powerful instinct of genius, to lead 
the life of a severe student under every temp- 
tation to indolence. Still it is true that Mr. 
Buskin's career would have been impossible 
for a poor man, however gifted. A poor 
man would not have had access to Mr. Pus- 
kin's materials, and one of his chief superior- 
ities has always been an abundant wealth of 
material. And if we go so far as to suppose 
that the poor man might have found other 
materials perhaps equivalent to these, we 
know that he could not have turned them to 
that noble use. The poor critic would be im- 
mediately absorbed in the ocean of anony- 
mous periodical literature ; he could not find 
time for the incubation of great works. 
"Modern Painters," the result of seventeen 
years of study, is not simply a work of gen- 
ius but of genius seconded by wealth. Close 
to it on my shelves stand four volumes which 
are the monument of another intellectual life 
devoted to the investigation of nature. De 
Saussure, whom Mr. Ruskin reverences as 
one of his ablest teachers, and whom all sin- 
cere students of nature regard as a model 
observer, pursued for many laborious years a 
kind of life which was not, and could not be, 
self-supporting in the pecuniary sense. Many 
other patient laborers, who have not the celeb- 
rity of these, work steadily in the same way, 
and are enabled to do so by the possession of 
independent fortune. I know one such who 
gives a whole summer to' the examination of 



230 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

three or four acres of mountain-ground, the 
tangible result being comprised in a few mem- 
oranda, which, considered as literary ma- 
terial, might (in the hands of a skilled pro- 
fessional writer) just possibly be worth five 
pounds. 

Not only do narrow pecuniary means often 
render high intellectual enterprises absolute- 
ly impossible, but they do what is frequently 
even more trying to the health and charac- 
ter, they permit you to undertake work that 
would be worthy of you if you might only 
have time and materials for the execution of 
it, and then spoil it in the doing. An intel- 
lectual laborer will bear anything except 
that. You may take away the very table he 
is writing upon, if you let him have a deal 
board for his books and papers; you may 
take away all his fine editions, if you leave 
him common copies that are legible; you 
may remove his very candlestick, if you 
leave him a bottle-neck to stick his candle in, 
and he will go on working cheerfully still. 
But the moment you do anything to spoil the 
quality of the work itself, you make him irri- 
table and miserable. " You think," says Sir 
Arthur Helps, ' ' to gain a good man to man- 
age your affairs because he happens to have 
a small share in your undertaking. It is a 
great error. You want him to do something 
well which you are going to tell him to do. 
If he has been wisely chosen, and is an able 
man, his pecuniary interest in the matter will 
be mere dust in the balance, when compared 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 231 

with the desire which belongs to all such men 
to do their work well. " Yes, this is the cen- 
tral passion of all men of true ability, to do 
their work well ; their happiness lies in that, 
and not in the amount of their profits, or 
even in their reputation. But then, on the 
other hand, they suffer indescribable mental 
misery when circumstances compel them to 
do their work less well than they know that, 
under more favorable circumstances, they 
would be capable of doing it. The want of 
money is, in the higher intellectual pursuits, 
the most common hindrance to thoroughness 
and excellence of work. De Senancour, who, 
in consequence of a strange concatenation of 
misfortunes, was all his life struggling in 
shallows, suffered not from the privations 
themselves, but from the vague feeling that 
they stunted his intellectual growth; and 
any experienced student of human nature 
must be aware that De Senancour was right. 
With larger means he would have seen more 
of the world, and known it better, and writ- 
ten of it with riper wisdom. He said that 
the man ' ' who only saw in poverty the direct 
effect of the money-privation, and only com- 
pared, for instance, an eight-penny dinner to 
one that cost ten shillings, would have no 
cenception of the true nature of misfortune, 
for not to spend money is the least of the 
evils of poverty." Bossuet said that he "had 
no attachment to riches, and still if he had 
only what is barely necessary, if he felt him- 
self narrowed, he would lose more than half 



232 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

his talents. " Sainte-Beuve said, ' k Only think a 
little what a difference there is in the starting 
point and in the employment of the faculties 
between a Due de Luynes and a Senancour." 
How many of the most distinguished authors 
have been dependent upon private means, 
not simply for physical sustenance, but for 
the opportunities which they afforded of gain- 
ing that experience of life which was abso- 
lutely essential to the full growth of their 
mental faculties. Shelley's writings brought 
him no profit whatever, and without a private 
income he could not have produced them, for 
he had. not a hundred buyers. Yet his whole 
time was employed in study or in travel, 
which for him was study of another kind, or 
else in the actual labor of composition. 
Wordsworth tried to become a London jour- 
nalist and failed. A young man called Raisley 
Calvert died and left him 900 1. ; this saved 
the poet in Wordsworth, as it kept him till 
the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads," and 
afterwards other pieces of good luck happened 
to him, so that he could think and compose at 
leisure. Scott would not venture to devote 
himself to literature until he had first se- 
cured a comfortable income outside of it. 
Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxie- 
ties, and told fortunes by astrology, for a 
livelihood, saying that astrology as the 
daughter of astronomy ought to keep her 
mother ; but fancy a man of science wasting 
precious time over horoscopes! "I suppli- 
cate you," he writes to Mcestlin, " if there is 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 233 

a situation vacant at Tubingen, do what you 
can to obtain it for me, and let me know the 
prices of bread and wine and other necessa- 
ries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to 
live on beans." He had to accept all sorts 
of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any 
one who would pay him. His only tranquil 
time for study was when he lived in Styria, 
on his wife's income, a tranquillity that did 
not last for long, and never returned. How 
different is this from the princely ease of Ty- 
cho Brahe, who labored for science alone, 
with all the help. that the ingenuity of his 
age could furnish! There is the same con- 
trast, in a later generation, between Schiller 
and Goethe. Poor Schiller ' ' wasting so much 
of his precious life in literary hack-work, 
translating French books for a miserable pit- 
tance;" Goethe, fortunate in his pecuniary 
independence as in all the other great circum- 
stances of his life, and this at a time when 
the pay of authors was so miserable that they 
could hardly exist by the pen. Schiller got a 
shilling a page for his translations. Merck 
the publisher offered three pounds sterling 
for a drama of Goethe. "If Europe praised 
me," Goethe said, u what has Europe done for 
me? Nothing. Even my works have been an 
expense to me." 

The pecuniary rewards which men receive 
for their labor are so absurdly (yet inevitably) 
disproportionate to the intellectual power that 
is needed for the task, and also to the toil in- 
volved, that no one can safely rely upon the 



284 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

higher intellectual pursuits as a protection 
from money -anxieties. I will give you two 
instances of this disproportion, real instances, 
of men who are known to me personally. 
One of them is an eminent Englishman of 
most remarkable intellectual force, who for 
many years past has occupied his leisure in 
the composition of works that are valued by 
the thinking public to a degree which it would 
be difficult to exaggerate. But this thinking 
public is not numerous, and so in the year 
1866 this eminent philosopher, " unable to 
continue losing money in endeavoring to en- 
lighten his contemporaries, was compelled to 
announce the termination of his series." On 
the other hand, a Frenchman, also known to 
me personally, one day conceived the fortu- 
nate idea that a new primer might possibly 
be a saleable commodity. So he composed a 
little primer, beginning with the alphabet, ad- 
vancing to a, b, ab; b, a, ba; and even going 
so far in history as to affirm that Adam was 
the first man and Abraham the father of the 
faithful. He had the wisdom to keep the copy- 
right of this little publication, which employed 
(in the easiest of all imaginable literary labor) 
the evenings of a single week. It has brought 
him in, ever since, a regular income of 1201. a 
year, which, so far from showing any signs of 
diminution, is positively improving. This suc- 
cess encouraged the same intelligent gentle- 
man to compose more literature of the same 
order, and he is now the enviable owner of 
several other such copyrights, all of them 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 235 

very valuable ; in fact as good properties as 
house-leases in London. Here is an author 
who, from the pecuniary point of view, was 
incomparably more successful than Milton, or 
Shelley, or Goethe. If every intellectual man 
could shield his higher life by writing primers 
for children which should be as good as house- 
leases, if the proverb Qui pent le plus peui le 
moins were a true proverb, which it is not, 
then of course all men of culture would be per- 
fectly safe, since they all certainly know the 
contents of a primer. But you may be able to 
write the most learned philosophical treatise 
and still not be able to earn your daily 
bread. 

Consider, too, the lamentable loss of time 
which people of high culture incur in making 
experiments on public taste, when money be- 
comes one of their main objects. Whilst they 
are writing stories for children, or elementary 
educational books which people of far inferior 
attainment could probably do much better, 
their own self -improvement comes to a stand- 
still. If it could only be ascertained without 
delay what sort of work would bring in the 
money they require, then there would be some 
chance of apportioning time so as to make re- 
serves for self-improvement; but when they 
have to write a score of volumes merely to as- 
certain the humor of the public, there is little 
chance of leisure. The life of the professional 
author who has no reputation is much less 
favorable to high culture than the life of a 
tradesman in moderately easy circumstances' 



236 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

who can reserve an hour or two every day for 
some beloved intellectual pursuit. 

Sainte-Beuve tells us that during certain 
years of his life he had endeavored, and had 
been able, so to arrange his existence that it 
should have both sweetness and dignity, writ- 
ing from time to time what was agreeable, 
reading what was both agreeable and serious, 
cultivating friendships, throwing much of his 
mind into the intimate relations of every day, 
giving more to his friends than to the public, 
reserving what was most tender and delicate 
for the inner life, enjoying with moderation; 
such for him was the dream of an intellectual 
existence in which things truly precious were 
valued according to their worth. And ■ * above 
all" he said, above all his desire was not to 
write too much, " surtout ne pas trop ecrire." 
And then comes the regret for this wise, well- 
ordered life enjoyed by him only for a time. 
"La necessite depuis m'a saisi et m'a con- 
traint de renoncer a ce que je considerais 
comme le seul bonheur ou la consolation ex- 
quise du melancolique et du sage." 

Auguste Comte lamented in like manner the 
evil intellectual consequences of anxieties 
about material needs. "There is nothing," 
he said, ' ' more mortal to my mind than the 
necessity, pushed to a certain degree, to have 
to think each day about a provision for the 
next. Happily I think little and rarely about 
all that ; but whenever this happens to me I 
pass through moments of discouragement and 
positive despair, which if the influence of 






THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 237 

them became habitual would make me re- 
nounce all my labors, all my philosophical 
projects, to end my days like an ass." 

There are a hundred rules for getting rich, 
but the instinct of accumulation is worth all 
such rules put together. This instinct is rarely 
found in combination with high intellectual 
gifts, and the reason is evident. To advance 
from a hundred pounds to a thousand is not 
an intellectual advance, and there is no intel- 
lectual interest in the addition of a cipher at 
the bankers 1 . Simply to accumulate money 
that you are never to use is, from the intel- 
lectual point of view, as stupid an operation 
as can be imagined. We observe, too, that 
the great accumulators, the men who are 
gifted by nature with the true instinct, are 
not usually such persons as we feel any ambi- 
tion to become. Their faculties are concen- 
trated on one point, and that point, as it seems 
to us, of infinitely little importance. We can- 
not see that it signifies much to the intellect- 
ual well-being of humanity that John Smith 
should be worth his million when he dies, 
since we know quite well that John Smith's 
mind will be just as ill-furnished then as it is 
now. In places where much money is made 
we easily acquire a positive disgust for it, and 
the curate seems the most distinguished gen- 
tleman in the community, with his old black 
coat and his seventy pounds a year. We come 
to hate money-matters when we find that they 
exclude all thoughtful and disinterested con- 
versation, and we fly to the society of people 



238 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

-with fixed incomes, not large enough for much 
saving, to escape the perpetual talk about in- 
vestments. Our happiest hours have been 
spent with poor scholars, and artists, and men 
of science, whose words remain in the mem- 
ory and make us rich indeed. Then we dis- 
like money because it rules and restrains us, 
and because it is unintelligent and seems 
hostile, so far as that which is unintelligent 
can be hostile. And yet the real truth is that 
money is the strong protector of the intellect- 
ual life. The student sits and studies, too 
often despising the power that shelters him 
from the wintry night, that gives him roof 
and walls, and lamp, and books, and fire. For 
money is simply the accumulated labor of the 
past, guarding our peace as fleets and armies 
guard the industry of England, or like some 
mighty fortress- wall within which men follow 
the most peaceful avocations. The art is to use 
money so that it shall be the protector and 
not the scatterer of our time, the body-guard 
of the sovereign Intellect and Will. 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 239 
LETTER III. 

TO A STUDENT IN GREAT POVERTY. 

Poverty really a great obstacle— Difference between a thou- 
sand rich men and a thousand poor men taken from per- 
sons of average natural gifts— The Houses of Parliament 
—The English recognize the natural connection between 
wealth and culture — Connection between ignorance and 
parsimony in expenditure — What may be honestly said for 
the encouragement of a very poor student. 

As it seems to me that to make light of the 
difficulties which lie in the path of another is 
not to show true sympathy for him, even 
though it is done sometimes out of a sort of 
awkward kindness and for his encourage- 
ment, I will not begin by pretending that 
poverty is not a great obstacle to the perfec- 
tion of the intellectual life. It is a great ob- 
stacle; it is one of the very greatest of all 
obstacles. Only observe how riches and pov- 
erty operate upon mankind in the mass. 
Here and there no doubt a very poor man at- 
tains intellectual distinction when he has ex- 
ceptional strength of will, and health enough 
to bear a great strain of extra labor that he 
imposes upon himself, and natural gifts so 
brilliant that he can learn in an hour what 
common men learn in a day. But consider 
mankind in the mass. Look, for instance, at 
our two Houses of Parliament. They are 
composed of men taken from the average run 
of Englishmen with very little reference to 
ability, but almost all of them are rich men ; 
not one of them is poor, as you are poor; 



240 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

not one of them has to contend against the 
stern realities of poverty. Then consider the 
very high general level of intellectual attain- 
ment which distinguishes those two assem- 
blies, and ask yourself candidly whether a 
thousand men taken from the beggars in the 
streets, or even from the far superior class of 
our manufacturing operatives, would be 
likely to understand, as the two Houses of 
Parliament understand, the many compli- 
cated questions of legislation and of policy 
which are continually brought before them. 
We all know that the poor are too limited in 
knowledge and experience, from the want of 
the necessary opportunities, and too little 
accustomed to exercise their minds in the 
tranquil investigations of great questions, to 
be competent for the work of Parliament. It 
is scarcely necessary to insist upon this fact 
to an Englishman, because the English have 
always recognized the natural connection be- 
tween wealth and culture, and have preferred 
to be governed by the rich from the belief 
that they are likely to be better informed, and 
better situated for intellectual activity of a 
disinterested kind, than those members of the 
community whose time and thoughts are al- 
most entirely occupied in winning their daily 
bread by the incessant labor of their hands. 
And if you go out into the world, if you mix 
with men of very different classes, you will 
find that in a broad average way (I am not 
speaking just now of the exceptions) the 
richer classes are much more capable of enter- 



THE IX Fl UENCES OF MONEY. 241 

ing into the sort of thinking which may be 
called intellectual than those whose money is 
less plentiful, and whose opportunities have 
therefore been less abundant. Indeed it may 
be asserted, roughly and generally, that the 
narrowness of men!s ideas is in direct propor- 
tion to their parsimony in expenditure. I do 
not mean to affirm that all who spend largely 
attain large intellectual results, for of course 
we know that a man may spend vast sums on 
pursuits which do not educate him in any- 
thing worth knowing, but the advantage is 
that with habits of free expenditure the germs 
of thought are well tilled and watered, where- 
as parsimony denies them every external 
help. The most spending class in Europe is the 
English gentry, it is also the class most strik- 
ingly characterized by a high general average 
of information ; * the most parsimonious class 
in Europe is the French peasantry ; it is also 
the class most strikingly characterized by ig- 
norance and intellectual apathy. The Eng- 
lish gentleman has cultivated himself by va- 
rious reading and extensive travel, but the 
French peasant will not go anywhere except 
to the market-town, and could not pardon the 
extravagance of buying a book, or a candle 
to read it by in the evening. Between these 
extremes we have various grades of the mid- 
dle classes in which culture usually increases 

* The reader will please to bear in mind that I am speaking 
here of broad effects on great numbers. I do not think that 
aristocracy, in its spirit, is quite favorable to the exception- 
ally highest intellectual life. 
16 



242 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

very much in proportion to the expenditure. 
The rule is not without its exceptions ; there 
are rich vulgar people who spend a great deal 
without improving themselves at all — who 
only, by unlimited self-indulgence, succeed in 
making themselves so uncomfortably sensi- 
tive to every bodily inconvenience that they 
have no leisure, even in the midst of an un- 
occupied life, to think of anything but their 
own bellies and their own skins — people 
whose power of attention is so feeble that the 
smallest external incident distracts it, and 
who remember nothing of their travels but a 
catalogue of trivial annoyances. But people 
of this kind do not generally belong too fami- 
lies on whom wealth has had time to produce 
its best effects. What I mean is, that a fam- 
ily which has been for generations in the 
habit of spending four thousand a year will 
usually be found to have a more cultivated 
tone than one that has only spent four hun- 
dred. 

I have come to the recognition of this truth 
very reluctantly indeed, not because I dislike 
rich people, but merely because they are nec- 
essarily a very small minority, and I should 
like every human being to have the best bene- 
fits of culture if it were only possible. The 
plain living and high thinking that Words- 
worth so much valued is a cheering ideal, for 
most men have to live plainly, and if they 
could only think with a certain elevation we 
might hope to solve the great problem of hu- 
man life, the reconciliation of poverty and 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY. 243 

the soul. There certainly is a slow move- 
ment in that direction, and the shortening of 
the hours of labor may afford some margin 
of leisure; but we who work for culture 
every day and all day long, and still feel that 
we know very little, and have hardly skill 
enough to make any effective use of the little 
that we know, can scarcely indulge in very 
enthusiastic anticipations of the future cult- 
ure of the poor. 

Still, there are some things that may be 
rationally and truly said to a poor man who 
desires culture, and which are not without a 
sort of Spartan encouragement. You are re- 
stricted by your poverty, but it is not always 
a bad thing to be restricted, even from the 
intellectual point of view. The intellectual 
powers of well-to-do people are very common- 
ly made ineffective by the enormous multi- 
plicity of objects that are presented to their 
attention, and which claim from them a sort 
of polite notice like the greeting of a great 
lady to each of her thousand guests. It re- 
quires the very rarest strength of mind, in a 
rich man, to concentrate his attention on any- ! 
thing — there are so many things that he is ] 
expected to make a pretence of knowing ; but 
nobody expects you to know anything, and 
this is an incalculable advantage. I think 
that all poor men who have risen to subse- 
quent distinction have been greatly indebted 
to this independence of public opinion as to 
what they ought to know. In trying to 
satisfy that public opinion by getting up a 



244 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

pretence of various sorts of knowledge, which 
is only a sham, we sacrifice not only much 
precious time, but we blunt our natural in- 
terest in things. That interest you preserve 
in all its virgin force, and this force carries a 
man far. Then, again, although the opportu- 
nities of rich people are very superior to 
yours, they are not altogether so superior as 
they seem. There exists a great equalizing 
power, the limitation of human energy. A 
rich man may sit down to an enormous ban- 
quet, but he can only make a good use of the 
little that he is able to digest. So it is with the 
splendid intellectual banquet that is spread 
before the rich man's eyes. He can only pos- 
sess what he has energy to master,. and too 
frequently the manifest impossibility of 
mastering everything produces a feeling of 
discouragement that ends in his mastering 
nothing. A poor student, especially if he 
lives in an out-of-the-way place where there 
are no big libraries to bewilder him, may 
apply his energy with effect in the study of a 
few authors. 

I used to believe a great deal more in op- 
portunities and less in application than I do 
now. Time and health are needed, but with 
these there are always opportunities. Rich 
people have a fancy for spending money very 
uselessly, on their culture because it seems to 
them more valuable when it has been costly ; 
but the truth is, that by the blessing of good 
and cheap literature, intellectual light bs.s 
become almost as accessible as daylight. I 



THE INFLUENCES OF MONET. 24a 

have a rich friend who 'travels more, and 
buys more costly things, than I do, but he 
does not really learn more or advance farther 
in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully 
occupied, what has he to set against them? 
only other well-occupied days, no more. If 
he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg he is 
missing the benefit I am getting round my 
house, and in it. The sum of the year's bene- 
fit seems to be surprisingly alike in both 
cases. So if you are reading a piece of thor- 
oughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may 
possibly be as well occupied as you — he is 
certainly not better occupied. When I open 
a noble volume I say to myself, " Now the 
only Croesus that I envy is he who is reading 
a better book than this." 



PART VI. 

CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 



LETTER I. 



TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FIRMLY 
RESOLVED NEVER TO WEAR ANYTHING BUT 
A GRAY COAT.* 

Secret enjoyment of rebellion against custom, and of the dis- 
abilities resulting from it— Penalties imposed by Society 
and by Nature out of proportion to the offence— Instances 
—What we consider penalties not really penalties, but 
only consequences— Society likes harmony, and is of- 
fended by dissonance— Utility of rebels against custom— 
That they ought to reserve their power of rebellion for 
great occasions— Uses of custom — Duty of the intellect- 
ual class — Best way to procure the abolition of a custom 
we disapprove— Bad customs— Eccentricity sometimes a 
duty. 

When I had the pleasure of staying at 
your father's house, you told me, rather to my 
surprise, that it was impossible for you to go 
to balls and dinner-parties because you did 
not possess such a thing as a dress-coat. The 
reason struck me as being scarcely a valid 
one, considering the rather high scale of ex- 
penditure adopted in the paternal mansion. 
It seemed clear that the eldest son of a family 
which lived after the liberal fashion of York- 

* The title of this letter seems so odd, that it may be neces- 
sary to inform the reader that it was addressed to a real 
Toerson. 



CUSTOM ANT) TRADITION. 247 

shire country gentlemen could afford himself 
a dress-coat if he liked. Then I wondered 
whether you disliked dress-coats from a be- 
lief that they were unbecoming to your per- 
son; but a very little observation of your 
character convinced me that, whatever might 
be your weaknesses (for everybody has some 
weaknesses), anxiety about personal appear- 
ance was not one of them. 

The truth is, that you secretly enjoy this 
little piece of disobedience to custom, and all 
the disabilities which result from it. This lit- 
tle rebellion is connected with a larger rebel- 
lion, and it is agreeable to you to demonstrate 
the unreasonableness of society by incurring 
a very severe penalty for a very trifling of- 
fence. You are always dressed decently, you 
offend against no moral rule, you have culti- 
vated your mind by study and reflection, and 
it rather pleases you to think that a young 
gentleman so well qualified for society in 
everything of real importance should be ex- 
cluded from it because he has not purchased 
a permission from his tailor. 

The penalties imposed by society for the in- 
fraction of very trifling details of custom are 
often, as it seems, out of all proportion to the 
offence ; but so are the penalties of nature. 
Only three days before the date of this letter, 
an intimate friend of mine was coming home 
from a day's shooting. His nephew, a fine 
young man in the full enjoyment of exist- 
ence, was walking ten paces in advance. A 
covey of partridges suddenly cross the road : 



248 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

my friend in shouldering his gun touches the 
trigger just a second too soon, and kills his 
nephew. Now, think of the long years of 
mental misery that will be the punishment of 
that very trifling piece of carelessness ! My 
poor friend has passed, in the space of a single 
instant, from a joyous life to a life that is per- 
manently and irremediably saddened. It is 
as if he had left the summer sunshine to 
enter a gloomy dungeon and begin a perpet- 
ual imprisonment. And for what? For hav- 
ing touched a trigger, without evil intention, 
a little too precipitately. It seems harder 
still for the victim, who is sent out of the 
world in the bloom of perfect manhood be- 
cause his uncle was not quite so cool as he 
ought to have been. Again, not far from 
where I live, thirty-five men were killed last 
week in a coal-pit from an explosion of fire- 
damp. One of their number had struck a 
lucif er to light his pipe : for doing this in a 
place where he ought not to have done it, the 
man suffers the penalty of death, and thirty- 
four others with him. The fact is simply 
that Nature will be obeyed, and makes no at- 
tempt to proportion punishments to offences : 
indeed, what in our human way we call pun- 
ishments are not punishments, but simple 
consequences. So it is with the great social 
penalties. Society anil be obeyed: if you re- 
fuse obedience, you must take the consequen- 
ces. Society has only one law, and that is 
custom. Even religion itself is socially power- 
ful only just so far as it has custom on its side. 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 219 

Nature does not desire that thirty -five men 
should be destroyed because one could not re- 
sist the temptation of a pipe ; but fire-damp is 
highly inflammable, and the explosion is a 
simple consequence. Society does not desire 
to exclude you because you will not wear even- 
ing dress; but the dress is customary, and 
your exclusion is merely a consequence of your 
nonconformity. The view of society goes no 
farther in this than the artistic conception 
(not very delicately artistic, perhaps) that it is 
prettier to see men in black coats regularly 
placed between ladies round a dinner-table 
than men in gray coats or brown coats. The 
uniformity of costume appears to represent 
uniformity of sentiment and to ensure a sort 
of harmony amongst the convives. What so- 
ciety really cares for is harmony ; what it dis- 
likes is dissent and nonconformity. It wants 
peace in the dining-room, peace in the draw- 
ing-room, peace everywhere in its realm of 
tranquil pleasure. You come in your shoot- 
ing-coat, which was in tune upon the moors, 
but is a dissonance amongst ladies in full 
dress. Do you not perceive that fustian and 
velveteen, which were natural amongst game- 
keepers, are not so natural on gilded chairs 
covered with silk, with lace and diamonds at 
a distance of three feet? You don't perceive 
it? Very well: society does not argue the 
point with you, but only excludes you. 

It has been said that in the life of every in- 
tellectual man there comes a time when he 
questions custom at all points, This seems to 



250 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

be a provision of nature for the reform and 
progress of custom itself, which without such 
questioning would remain absolutely station- 
ary and irresistibly despotic. You rebels 
against the established custom have your 
place in the great work of progressive civiliz- 
ation. Without you, Western Europe would 
have been a second China. It is to the contin- 
ual rebellion of such persons as yourself that 
we 4 owe whatever progress has been accom- 
plished since the times of our remotest fore- 
fathers. There have been rebels always, and 
the rebels have not been, generally speaking, 
the most stupid part of the nation. 

But what is the use of wasting this benefi- 
cial power of rebellion on matters too trivial 
to be worth attention? Does it hurt your con- 
science to appear in a dress-coat? Certainly 
not, and you would be as good-looking in it as 
you are in your velveteen shooting-jacket 
with the pointers on the bronze buttons. Let 
us conform in these trivial matters, which no- 
body except a tailor ought to consider worth a 
moment's attention, in order to reserve our 
strength for the protection of intellectual lib- 
erty. Let society arrange your dress for you 
(it will save you infinite trouble), but never 
permit it to stifle the expression of your 
thought. You find it convenient, because you 
are timid, to exclude yourself from the world 
by refusing to wear its costume ; but a bolder 
man would let the tailor do his worst, and 
then go into the world and courageously de- 
fend there the pei-sons and causes that are 



CUSTOM AND TEADITION. 251' 

misunderstood and slanderously misrepre- 
sented. The fables of Spenser are fables only 
in form, and a noble knight may at any time 
go forth, armed in the panoply of a tail-coat, 
a dress waistcoat, and a manly moral courage, 
to do battle across the dinner- table and in the 
drawing-room for those who have none to de- 
fend them. 

It is unphilosophical to set ourselves obsti- 
nately against custom in the mass, for it mul- 
tiplies the power of men by settling useless 
discussion and clearing the ground for our 
best and most prolific activity. The business 
of the world could not be carried forward one 
day without a most complex code of customs ; 
and law itself is little more than custom slight- 
ly improved upon by men reflecting together 
at their leisure, and reduced to codes and sys- 
tems. We ought to think of custom as a most 
precious legacy of the past, saving us infinite 
perplexity, yet not as an infallible rule. The 
most intelligent community would be conser- 
vative in its habits, yet not obstinately con- 
servative, but willing to hear and adopt the 
suggestions of advancing reason. The great 
duty of the intellectual class, and its especial 
function, is to confirm what is reasonable in 
the customs that have been handed down to 
us, and so maintain their authority, yet at the 
same time to show that custom is not final, 
but merely a form suited to the world's con- 
venience. And whenever you are convinced 
that a custom is no longer serviceable, the way 
to procure the abolition of it is tp lead men 



252 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

very gradually away from it, by offering a 
substitute at first very slightly different from 
what they have been long used to. If the 
English had been in the habit of tattooing, the 
best way to procure its abolition would have 
been to admit that it was quite necessary to 
cover the face with elaborate patterns, yet 
gently to suggest that these patterns would 
be still more elegant if delicately painted in 
water-colors. Then you might have gone on 
arguing — still admitting, of course, the ab- 
solute necessity for ornament of some kind — 
that good taste demanded only a moderate 
amount of it ; and so you would have brought 
people gradually to a little flourish on the nose 
or forehead, when the most advanced reform- 
ers might have set the example of dispensing 
with ornament altogether. Many of our 
contemporaries have abandoned shaving in 
this gradual way, allowing the whiskers to 
encroach imperceptibly, till at last the razor 
lay in the dressing-case unused. The abomi- 
nable black cylinders that covered our heads 
a few years ago were vainly resisted by radi- 
cals in custom, but the moderate reformers 
gradually reduced their elevation, and now 
they are things of the past. 

Though I think we ought to submit to cus- 
tom in matters of indifference, and to reform it 
gradually, whilst affecting submission in mat- 
ters altogether indifferent, still there are other 
matters on which the only attitude worthy of 
a man is the most bold and open resistance to 
its dictates. . Custom may have a right to au< 






CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 253 

thority over your wardrobe, but it cannot 
have any right to ruin your self-respect. Not 
only the virtues most advantageous to well- 
being, but also the most contemptible and de- 
grading vices, have at various periods of the 
world's history been sustained by the full au- 
thority of custom. There are places where 
forty years ago drunkenness was conformity to 
custom, and sobriety an eccentricity. There 
are societies, even at the present day, where 
licentiousness is the rule of custom, and 
chastity the sign of weakness or want of spirit. 
There are communities (it cannot be necessary 
to name them) in which successful fraud, es- 
pecially on a large scale, is respected as the 
proof of smartness, whilst a man who remains 
poor because he is honest is despised for slow- 
ness and incapacity. There are whole nations 
in which religious hypocrisy is strongly ap- 
proved by custom, and honesty severely con- 
demned. The Wahabee iVrabs may be men- 
tioned as an instance of this, but the Wahabee 
Arabs are not the only people, nor is Nejed 
the only place, where it is held to be more 
virtuous to lie on the side of custom than to be 
an honorable mam in independence of it. In 
all communities where vice and hypocrisy are 
sustained by the authority of custom, eccen- 
tricity is a moral duty. In all communities 
where a low standard of thinking is received 
as infallible common sense, eccentricity be- 
comes an intellectual duty. There are hun- 
dreds of places in the provinces where it is im- 
possible for any man to lead the intellectual 



254 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

life without being condemned as an eccentric. 
It is the duty of intellectual men who are thus 
isolated to set the example of that which their 
neighbors call eccentricity, but which may be 
more accurately described as superiority. 



LETTER II. 

TO A CONSERVATIVE WHO HAD ACCUSED THE 
AUTHOR OF A WANT OF RESPECT FOR TRA- 
DITION. 

Transition from the ages of tradition to that of experiment- 
Attraction of the future — Joubert— Saint-Marc Grirardin— 
Solved and unsolved problems — The introduction of a 
new element— Inapplicability of past experience — An ar- 
gument against Republics — The lessons of history — Mista- 
ken predictions that have been based on them — Morality 
and ecclesiastical authority— Compatibility of hopes for 
the future with gratitude to the past— That we are more 
respectful to the past than previous ages have been— Our 
feelings towards tradition— An incident at Warsaw— The 
reconstruction of the navy. 

The astonishing revolution in thought and 
practice which is taking place amongst the 
intelligent Japanese, the throwing away of a 
traditional system of living in order to estab- 
lish in its stead a system which, for an Asi- 
atic people, is nothing more than a vast ex- 
periment, has its counterpart in many an in- 
dividual life in Europe. We are like travel- 
lers crossing an isthmus between two seas, 
who have left one ship behind them, who 
have not yet seen the vessel that waits on the 
distant shore, and who experience to the full 
all the discomforts and inconveniences of the 



CUSTOM AN I) TRADITION. 255 

passage from one sea to the other. There is a 
break between the existence of our forefathers 
and that of our posterity, and it is we who 
have the misfortune to be situated exactly 
where the break occurs. We are leaving be- 
hind us the security, I do not say the safety, 
but the feeling of tranquillity which belonged 
to the ages of tradition ; we are entering upon 
ages whose spirit we foresee but dimly, whose 
institutions are the subject of guesses and 
conjectures. And yet this future, of which 
we know so little, attracts us more by the 
very vastness of its enigma than the rich his- 
tory of the past, so full of various incident, of 
powerful personages, of grandeur, and suffer- 
ing, and sorrow. Joubert already noticed 
this forward-looking of the modern mind. 
" The ancients," he observed, " said, ' Our an- 
cestors ; ' we say, ' Posterity. ' We do not 
love as they did la patrie, the country and 
laws of our forefathers; we love rather the 
laws and the country of our children. It is 
the magic of the future, and not that of the 
past, which seduces us."" Commenting on 
this thought of Joubert's, Saint-Marc Girardin 
said that we loved the future because we 
loved ourselves, and fashioned the future in 
our own image ; and he added, with partial but 
not complete injustice, that our ignorance of 
the past was a cause of this tendency in our 
minds, since it is shorter to despise the past 
than to study it. These critics and accusers 
of the modern spirit are not, however, alto- 
gether fair to it. If the modern spirit looks 



256 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

so much to the future, it is because the prob- 
lems of the past are solved problems, whilst 
those of the future have the interest of a 
game that is only just begun. We know 
what became of feudalism, we know the 
work that it accomplished and the services 
that it rendered, but we do not yet know 
what will be the effects of modern democracy 
and of the scientific and industrial spirit. It- 
is the novelty of this element, the scientific 
spirit and the industrial development which 
is a part (but only a part) of its results, that 
makes the past so much less reliable as a 
guide than it would have been if no new ele- 
ment had intervened, and therefore so much 
less interesting for us. As an example of the 
inapplicability of past experience, I may men- 
tion an argument against Eepublics which 
has been much used of late by the partisans 
of monarchy in France. They have fre- 
quently told us that Republics had only suc- 
ceeded in very small States, and this is true 
of ancient democracies : but it is not less true 
that railways, and telegraphs, and the news- 
paper press have made great countries like 
France and the United States just as capable 
of feeling and acting simultaneously as the 
smallest Republics of antiquity. The parties 
which rely on what are called the lessons of 
history are continually exposed to great de- 
ceptions. In France, what may be called the 
historical party would not believe in the pos- 
sibility of a united Germany, because fifty 
years ago, with the imperfect means of com- 






CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 257 

munication which then existed, Germany 
was not and could not be united. The same 
historical party refused to believe that the 
Italian kingdom could ever hold together. 
In England, the historical party predicted 
the dismemberment of the United States, and 
in some other countries it has been a favorite 
article of faith that England could not keep 
her possessions. But theories of this kind are 
always of very doubtful applicability to the 
present, and their applicability to the future 
is even more doubtful still. Steam and elec- 
tricity have made great modern States prac- 
tically like so many great cities, so that Man- 
chester is like a suburb of London, and 
Havre the Piraeus of Paris, whilst the most 
trifling occasions bring the Sovereign of Italy 
to any of the Italian capitals. 

In the intellectual sphere the experience of 
the past is at least equally unreliable. If the 
power of the Catholic Church had been sud- 
denly removed from the Europe of the four- 
teenth century, the consequence would have 
been a moral anarchy difficult to conceive; 
but in our own day the real regulator of mor- 
ality is not the Church, but public opinion, 
in the formation of which the Church has a 
share, but only a share. It would therefore 
be unsafe to conclude that the weakening of 
ecclesiastical authority must of necessity, in 
the future, be followed by moral anarchy, 
since it is possible, and even probable, that 
the other great influences upon public opin- 
ion may gain strength as this declines. And 
17 



258 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

in point of fact we have already lived long 
enough to witness a remarkable decline of ec- 
clesiastical authority, which is proved by the 
avowed independence of scientific writers and 
thinkers, and by the open opposition of al- 
most all the European Governments. The 
secular power resists the ecclesiastical in Ger- 
many and Spain. In France it establishes a 
form of government which the Church de- 
tests. In Ireland it disestablishes and disen- 
dows a hierarchy. In Switzerland it resists 
the whole power of the Papacy. In Italy it 
seizes the sacred territory and plants itself 
within the very walls of Rome. And yet the 
time which has witnessed this unprecedented 
self-assertion of the laity has witnessed a 
positive increase in the morality of public 
sentiment, especially in the love of justice 
and the willingness to hear truth, even when 
truth is not altogether agreeable to the listen- 
er, and in the respect paid by opponents to 
able and sincere men, merely for their ability 
and sincerity. This love of justice, this pa- 
tient and tolerant hearing of new truth, in 
which our age immeasurably exceeds all the 
ages that have preceded it, are the direct re- 
sults of the scientific spirit, and are not only 
in themselves eminently moral, but condu- 
cive to moral health generally. And this ad- 
vancement may be observed in countries 
which were least supposed to be capable of 
it. Even the French, of whose immorality 
we have heard so much, have a public opin- 
ion which is gradually gaining a salutary 



CUSTOM AND TBADITION. 259 

strength, an increasing dislike for barbarity 
and injustice, and a more earnest desire that 
no citizen, except by his own fault, should be 
excluded from the benefits of civilization. 
The throne which has lately fallen was under- 
mined by the currents of this public opinion 
before it sank in military disaster. 4k Aussi 
me contenterai-je," says Littre, u d'appeler 
Fattention sur la guerre, dont r opinion pub- 
lique ne tolere plus les antiques barbaries; 
sur la magistrature, qui repudie avec hor- 
reur les tortures et la question ; sur la toler- 
ance, qui a banni les persecutions religieuses ; 
sur Tequite, qui soumet tout le monde aux 
charges communes ; sur le sentiment de soli- 
darity qui du sort des classes pauvres fait le 
plus pressant et le plus noble probleme du 
temps present. Pour moi, je ne sais carac. 
teriser ce spectacle si hautement moral qu'en 
disant que Fhumanite, amelioree, accepte de 
plus en plus le devoir et la tache d'etendre le 
domaine de la justice et de la bonte. " 

Yet this partial and comparative satisfac- 
tion that we find in the present, and our 
larger hopes for the future, are quite com- 
patible with gratitude to all who in the past 
have rendered such improvement possible for 
us, and the higher improvement that we hope 
for possible to those who will come after us. 
I cannot think that the present age may be 
accused with justice of exceptional ignorance 
or seorn of its predecessors. We have been 
told that we scorn our forefathers because old 
buildings are removed to suit modern con- 



260 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

veniences, because the walls of old York have 
been pierced for the railway, and a tower of 
Conway Castle has been undermined that the 
Holyhead mail may pass. But the truth is, 
that whilst we care a little for our predeces- 
sors, they cared still less for theirs. The 
mediaeval builders not only used as quarries 
any Roman remains that happened to come 
in their way, but they spoiled the work of 
their own fathers and grandfathers by in- 
truding their new fashions on buildings origi- 
nally designed in a different style of art. 
When an architect in the present day has to 
restore some venerable church, he endeavors 
to do so in harmony with the design of the 
first builder ; but such humility as this was 
utterly foreign to the mediaeval mind, which 
often destroyed the most lovely and neces- 
sary details to replace them with erections in 
the fashion of the day, but artistically un- 
suitable. The same disdain for the labors of 
other ages has prevailed until within the 
memory of living men, and our age is really 
the first that has made any attempt to con- 
form itself, in these things, to the intentions 
of the dead. I may also observe, that al- 
though history is less relied upon as a guide 
to the future than it was formerly, it is more 
carefully and thoroughly investigated from 
an intellectual interest in itself. 

To conclude. It seems to me that tradition 
has much less influence of an authoritative 
kind than it had formerly, and that the au- 
thority which it still possesses is everywhere 






CUSTOM AND THADITION. 201 

steadily declining ; that as a guide to the fu- 
ture of the world it is more likely to mislead 
than to enlighten us, and still that all intel- 
lectual and educated people must always take 
a great interest in tradition, and have a certain 
sentiment of respect for it. Consider what 
our feelings are towards the Church of Eome, 
the living embodiment of tradition. No well- 
informed person can forget the immense serv- 
ices that in former ages she has rendered to 
European civilization, and yet at the same 
time such a person would scarcely wish to 
place modern thought under her direction, 
nor would he consult the Pope about the ten- 
dencies of the modern world. When in 1829 
the city of Warsaw erected a monument to 
Copernicus, a scientific society there waited 
in the Church of the Holy Cross for a service 
that was to have added solemnity to their 
commemoration. They waited vainly. Not 
a single priest appeared. The clergy did not 
feel authorized to countenance a scientific dis- 
covery which, in a former age, had been con- 
demned by the authority of the Church. 
This incident is delicately and accurately typ- 
ical of the relation between the modern and 
the traditional spirit. The modern spirit is 
not hostile to tradition, and would not object 
to receive any consecration which tradition 
might be able to confer, but there are dif- 
ficulties in bringing the two elements to- 
gether. 
We need not, however, go so far as War- 



262 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

saw, or back to the year 1829, for examples of 
an unwillingness on the part of the modern 
mind to break entirely with the traditional 
spirit. Our own country is remarkable both 
for the steadiness of its advance towards a 
future widely different from the past, and f 01 
an affectionate respect for the ideas and in- 
stitutions that it gradually abandons, as it is 
forced out of them by new conditions of exist- 
ence, I may mention, as one example out of 
very many, our feeling about the reconstruc- 
tion of the navy. Here is a matter in which 
science has compelled us to break with tradi- 
tion absolutely and irrevocably ; we have done 
so, but we have done so with the greatest re- 
gret. The ships of the line that our hearts 
and imaginations love are the ships of Nelson 
and Collingwood and Cochrane. We think of 
the British fleets that bore down upon the 
enemy with the breeze in their white sails ; 
we think of the fine qualities of seamanship 
that were fostered in our Agamemnons, and 
Victories, and Temeraires. Will the navies 
of the future ever so clothe their dreadful 
powers with beauty, as did the ordered col- 
umns of Nelson, when they came with a fair 
wind and all sails set, at eleven o'clock in the 
morning into Trafalgar Bay? We see the 
smoke of their broadsides rising up to their 
sails like mists to the snowy Alps, and high 
above, against heaven's blue, the unconquered 
flag of England ! Nor do we perceive now for 
the first time that there was poetry in those 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 203 

fleets of old ; our forefathers felt it then, and 
expressed it in a thousand songs.* 



LETTER III. 

TO A LADY WHO LAMENTED THAT HER SON HAD 
INTELLECTUAL DOUBTS CONCERNING THE DOG- 
1 MAS OF THE CHURCH. 

The situation of mother and son a very common one— Painful 
only when the parties are in earnest—The knowledge of 
the difference evidence of a deeper unity— Value of hon- 
esty—Evil of a splendid official religion not believed by 
men of culture — Diversity of belief an evidence of relig- 
ious vitality — Criticism not to be ignored — Desire for the 
highest attainable truth— Letter from Lady Westmorland 
about her son. Julian Fane. 

The difference which you describe as hav- 
ing arisen between your son and you on the 
most grave and important subject which can 
occupy the thoughts of men, gives the outline 
of a situation painful to both the parties con- 

* I had desired to say something about the uses of tradition 
in the industrial arts and in the fine arts, but the subject is a 
very large one, and I have not time or space to treat it prop- 
erly here. I may observe, however, briefly, that the genuine 
spirit of tradition has almost entirely disappeared from Eng- 
lish industry and art, where it has been replaced by a spirit 
of scientific investigation and experiment. The true tradi- 
tional spirit was still in full vigor in Japan a few years ago, 
and it kept the industry and art of that country up to a re- 
markably high standard. The traditional spirit is most fa- 
vorable to professional skill, because, under its influence, the 
apprentice learns thoroughly, whereas under other influences 
he often learns very imperfectly. The inferiority of English 
painting to French (considered technically) has been due to 
the prevalence of a traditional spirit in the French school 
which was almost entirely absent from our own. 



2Q4 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

cerned, and which lays on each of them new 
and delicate obligations. You do not know 
how common this situation is, and how sadly 
it interferes with the happiness of the very 
best and most pure-minded souls alive. For 
such a situation produces pain only where 
both parties are earnest and sincere ; and the 
more earnest both are, the more painful does 
the situation become. If you and your son 
thought of religion merely from the conven- 
tional point of view, as the world does only 
too easily, you would meet on a common 
ground, and might pass through life without 
ever becoming aware of any gulf of separa- 
tion, even though the hollo wness of your sev- 
eral professions were of widely different 
kinds. But as it happens, unfortunately for 
your peace (yet would you have it other- 
wise?), that you are both in earnest, both 
anxious to believe what is true and do what 
you believe to be right, you are likely to 
cause each other much suffering of a kind 
altogether unknown to less honorable and de- 
voted natures. There are certain forms of 
suffering which affect only the tenderest and 
truest hearts ; they have so many privileges, 
that this pain has been imposed upon them 
as the shadow of their sunshine. 

Let me suggest, as some ground of consola- 
tion and of hope, that your very knowledge 
of the difference which pains you is in itself 
the evidence of a deeper unity. If your son 
has told you the full truth about the changes 
in his belief, it is probably because you your* 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION, 265 

self have educated him in the habit of truth- 
fulness, which is as much a law of religion as 
it is of honor. Do you wish this part of his 
education to be enfeebled or obliterated? 
Could the Church herself reasonably or con- 
sistently blame him for practising the one 
virtue which, in a peaceful and luxurious so- 
ciety, demands a certain exercise of courage? 
Our beliefs are independent of our will, but 
our honesty is not; and he who keeps his 
honesty keeps one of the most precious pos- 
sessions of all true Christians and gentlemen. 
What state of society can be more repugnant 
to high religious feeling than a state of 
smooth external unanimity combined with 
the indifference of the heart, a state in which 
some splendid official religion performs its 
daily ceremonies as the costliest functionary 
of the Government, whilst the men of culture 
take a share in them out of conformity to the 
customs of society, without either the assent 
of the intellect or the emotion of the soul? 
All periods of great religious vitality have 
been marked by great and open diversity of 
belief ; and to this day those countries where 
religion is most alive are the farthest removed 
from unanimity in the details of religious 
doctrine. If your son thinks these things of 
such importance to his conscience that he 
feels compelled to inflict upon you the slight * 
est pain on their account, you may rest as^ 
sured that his religious fibre is still full of vi- 
tality. If it were deadened, he would argue 
very much as follows. He would say: 



266 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Ci These old doctrines of the Church are not 
of sufficient consequence for me to disturb 
my mother about them. What is the use of 
alluding to them ever? " And then you 
would have no anxiety; and he himself 
would have the feeling of settled peace which 
comes over a battle-field when the dead are 
buried out of sight. It is the peculiarity — - 
some would say the evil, but I cannot think 
it an evil— of an age of great intellectual ac- 
tivity to produce an amount of critical in- 
quiry into religious doctrine which is entire- 
ly unknown to times of simple tradition. 
And in these days the critical tendency has 
received a novel stimulus from the succes- 
sive suggestions of scientific discovery. No 
one who, like your son, fully shares in the in- 
tellectual life of the times in which he lives, 
can live as if this criticism did not exist. If 
he affected to ignore it, as an objection 
already answered, there would be disingenu- 
ousness in the affectation. Fifty years ago, 
even twenty or thirty years ago, a highly in- 
tellectual young man might have hardened 
into the fixed convictions of middle age with- 
out any external disturbance, except such as 
might have been easily avoided. The criti- 
cism existed then, in certain circles; but it 
was not in the air, as it is now. The life of 
mankind resembles that of a brook which 
has its times of tranquillity, but farther on its 
times of trouble and unrest. Our immediate 
forefathers had the peaceful time for their 
lot ; those who went before them had passed 






CUSTOM AND TRADITION, 201 

over very rough ground at the Reformation. 
For us, in our turn, comes the recurrent rest- 
lessness, though not in the same place. 
What we are going to, who can tell? What 
we suffer just now, you and many others 
know too accurately. There are gulfs of sep- 
aration in homes of the most perfect love. 
Our only hope of preserving what is best in 
that purest of earthly felicities lies in the 
practice of an immense charity, a wide toler- 
ance, a sincere respect for opinions that are 
not ours, and a deep trust that the loyal pur- 
suit of truth cannot but be in perfect accord- 
ance with the intentions of the Creator, who 
endowed the noblest races of mankind with 
the indefatigable curiosity of science. Not 
to inquire was possible for our fore-fathers, 
but it is not possible for us. With our in- 
tellectual growth has come an irrepressible 
anxiety to possess the highest truth attain- 
able by us. This desire is not sinful, not 
presumptuous, but really one of the best and 
purest of our instincts, being nothing else 
than the sterling honesty of the intellect, 
seeking the harmony of concordant truth, 
and utterly disinterested. 

I may quote, as an illustration of the ten- 
dencies prevalent amongst the noblest and 
most cultivated young men, a letter from 
Lady Westmorland to Mr. Robert Lytton 
about her accomplished son, the now cele- 
brated Julian Fane. "We had," she said, 
" several conversations, during his last ill- 
ness, upon religious subjects, about which he 



268 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

had his own peculiar views. The disputes 
and animosities between High and Low 
Church, and all the feuds of religious sectari- 
anism, caused him the deepest disgust. I 
think, indeed, that he carried this feeling too 
far. He had a horror of cant, which I also 
think was exaggerated ; for it gave him a re- 
pulsion for all outward show of religious ob- 
servances. He often told me that he never 
missed the practice of prayer, at morning and 
evening, and at other times. But his prayers 
were his own: his own thoughts in his own 
words. He said that he could not pray in the 
set words of another ; nor unless he was alone. 
As to joining in family prayers, or praying 
at church, he found it impossible. He con- 
stantly read the New Testament. He depre- 
cated the indiscriminate reading of the Bible. 
He firmly believed in the efficacy of sincere 
prayer ; and was always pleased when I told 
him I had prayed for him/' 

To this it may be added, that many recent 
conversions to the Church of Rome, though 
apparently of an exactly opposite character, 
have in reality also been brought about by 
the scientific inquiries of the age. The relig- 
ious sentiment, alarmed at the prospect of a 
possible taking away of that which it feeds 
upon, has sought in many instances to pre- 
serve it permanently under the guardianship 
of the strongest ecclesiastical authority. In 
an age of less intellectual disturbance this 
anxiety would scarcely have been felt; and 
the degree of authority claimed by one of the 



CUSTOM AM) TRADITION. 209 

reformed Churches would have been accepted 
as sufficient. Here again the agitations of the 
modern intellect have caused division in fam- 
ilies; and as you are lamenting the hetero- 
doxy of your son, so other parents regret the 
Roman orthodoxy of theirs. 



LETTER IV. 

TO THE SON OP THE, LADY TO WHOM THE PRE- 
CEDING LETTER WAS ADDRESSED. 

Difficulty of detaching intellectual from religious questions 
— The sacerdotal system Necessary to ascertain what 
religion is— Intellectual religion really nothing but philos- 
ophy — The popular instinct— The test of belief— Public 
worship — The intellect moral, but not religious— Intellect- 
ual activity sometimes in contradiction to dogma — Differ- 
ences between the intellectual and religious lives. 

Your request is not so simple as it appears. 
You ask me for a frank opinion as to the 
course your mind is taking in reference to very 
important subjects; but you desire only intel- 
lectual, and not religious guidance. The dif- 
ficulty is to effect any clear demarcation be- 
tween the two. Certainly I should never take 
upon myself to offer religious advice to any 
one ; it is difficult for those who have not qual- 
ified themselves for the priestly office to do 
that with force and effect. The manner in 
which a priest leads and manages a mind that 
has from the first been moulded in the beliefs 
and observances of his Church, cannot be im- 
itated by a layman. A priest starts always 



210 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

from authority ; his method, which has been 
in use frcm the earliest ages, consists first in 
claiming your unquestioning assent to certain 
doctrines, from which he immediately pro- 
ceeds to deduce the inferences that may affect 
your conduct or regulate your thoughts. It 
is a method perfectly adapted to its own ends. 
It can deal with all humanity, and produce 
the most immediate practical results. So long 
as the assent to the doctrines is sincere, the 
sacerdotal system may contend successfully 
against some of the strongest forms of evil ; 
but when the assent to the doctrines has 
ceased to be complete, when some of them are 
half -believed and others not believed at all, the 
system loses much of its primitive efficiency. 
It seems likely that your difficulty, the diffi- 
culty of so many intellectual men in these 
days, is to know where the intellectual ques- 
tions end and the purely religious ones can be 
considered to begin. If you could once ascer- 
tain that, in a manner definitely satisfactory, 
you would take your religious questions to a 
clergyman and your intellectual ones to a 
man of science, and so get each solved inde- 
pendently. 

Without presuming to offer a solution of so 
complex a difficulty as this, I may suggest to 
you that it is of some importance to your in- 
tellectual life to ascertain what religion is. A 
book was published many years ago by a very 
learned author, in which he endeavored to 
show that what is vulgarly called scepticism 
may be intellectual religion. Now, although 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 271 

nothing can be more distasteful to persons of 
culture than the bigotry which refuses the 
name of religion to other people's opinions, 
merely because they are other people's opin- 
ions, I suspect that the popular instinct is 
right in denying the name of religion to the 
inferences of the intellect. The description 
which the author just alluded to gave of what 
he called intellectual religion was in fact 
simply a description of philosophy, and of 
that discipline which the best philosophy im- 
poses upon the heart and the passions. On 
the other hand, Dr. Arnold, when he says 
that by religion he always understands Chris- 
tianity, narrows the word as much as he 
would have narrowed the word "patriotism " 
had he defined it to mean a devotion to the 
interests of England. I think the popular in- 
stinct, though of course quite unable to con- 
struct a definition of religion, is in its vague 
way very well aware of the peculiar nature of 
religious thought and feeling. The popular 
instinct would certainly never confound relig- 
ion with philosophy on the one hand, nor, on 
the other, unless excited to opposition, would 
it be likely to refuse the name of religion to 
another worship, such as Mahometanism, for 
instance. 

According to the popular instinct, then, 
which on a subject of this kind appears the 
safest of all guides, a religion involves first a 
belief and next a public practice. The nature 
of the belief is in these days wholly peculiar 
to religion ; in other times it was not so, be- 



272 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

cause then people believed other things much 
in the same way. But in these days the test 
of religious belief is that it should make men 
accept as certain truth what they would dis- 
believe on any other authority. For example, 
a true Roman Catholic believes that the con- 
secrated host is the body of Christ, and so 
long as he lives in the purely religious spirit 
he continues to' believe this; but so soon as 
the power of his religious sentiment declines 
he ceases to believe it, and the wafer appears 
to him a wafer, and no more. And so 
amongst Protestants the truly religious be- 
lieve many things which no person not being 
under the authority of religion could by any 
effort bring himself to believe. It is easy, for 
example, to believe that Joshua arrested the 
sun's apparent motion, so long as the religious 
authority of the Bible remains perfectly in- 
tact ; but no sooner does the reader become 
critical than the miracle is disbelieved. In 
all ages, and in all countries, religions have 
narrated marvellous things, and the people 
have always affirmed that not to believe these 
narratives constituted the absence of religion, 
or what they called atheism. They have 
equally, in all ages and countries, held the 
public act of participation in religious worship 
to be an essential part of what they called re- 
ligion. They do not admit the sufficiency of 
secret prayer. 

Can these popular instincts help us to a defi- 
nition? They may help us at least to mark 
the dividing line between religion and moral- 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 273 

ity, between religion and philosophy. No one 
has ever desired, more earnestly and eagerly 
than I, to discover the foundations of the in- 
tellectual religion ; no one has ever felt more 
chilling disappointment in the perception of 
the plain bare fact that the intellect gives 
morality, philosophy, precious things indeed, 
but not religion. It is like seeking art by 
science. Thousands of artists, whole schools 
from generation to generation, have sought 
fine art through anatomy and perspective; 
and although these sciences did not hinder 
the born artists from coming to art at last, 
they did not ensure their safe arrival in the 
art-paradise ; in many instances they even led 
men away from art. So it is with the great 
modern search for the intellectual religion; 
the idea of it is scientific in its source, and the 
result of it, the last definite attainment, is 
simply intellectual morality, not religion in 
the sense which all humanity has attached to 
religion during all the ages that have preceded 
ours. We may say that philosophy is the re- 
ligion of the intellectual ; and if we go scru- 
pulously to Latin derivations, it is so. But 
taking frankly the received meaning of the . 
word as it is used by mankind everywhere, 
we must admit that, although high intellect 
would lead us inevitably to high and pure 
morality, and to most scrupulously beautiful 
conduct in everything, towards men, towards 
women, towards even the lower and lowest 
animals, still it does not lead us to that belief 
in the otherwise unbelievable, or to that de- 
ls 



274 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

tailed caltus which is meant by religion in the 
universally accepted sense. It is disingenu- 
ous to take a word popularly respected and 
attribute to it another sense. Such a course 
is not strictly honest, and therefore not purely 
intellectual ; for the foundation of the intel- 
lectual life is honesty. 

The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that 
whilst it can never assume a position of hos- 
tility to religion, which it must always recog- 
nize as the greatest natural force for the ame- 
lioration of mankind, it is nevertheless com- 
pelled to enunciate truths which may happen 
to be in contradiction with dogmas received 
at this or that particular time. That you 
may not suspect me of a disposition to dwell 
continually on safe generalities and to avoid 
details out of timidity, let me mention two 
cases on which the intellectual and scientific 
find themselves at variance with the clergy. 
The clergy tell us that mankind descend from 
a single pair, and that in the earlier ages the 
human race attained a longevity counted not 
by decades but by centuries. Alexander 
Humboldt disbelieves the first of these propo- 
sitions, Professor Owen disbelieves the sec- 
ond. Men of science generally are of the 
same opinion. Few men of science accept 
Adam and Eve, few accept Methuselah. Pro- 
fessor Owen argues that, since the oldest 
skeletons known have the same system of 
teething that we have, man can never have 
lived long enough to require nine sets of 
teeth. In regard to these, and a hundred 






CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 275 

other points on which science advances new 
views, the question which concerns us is how 
we are to maintain the integrity of the intel- 
lectual life. The danger is the loss of inward 
ingenuousness, the attempt to persuade our- 
selves that we believe opposite statements. 
If once we admit disingenuousness into the 
mind, the intellectual life is no longer serene 
and pure. The plain course for the preserva- 
tion of our honesty, which is the basis of 
truly intellectual thinking, is to receive the 
truth, whether agreeable or the contrary, 
with all its train of consequences, however 
repulsive or discouraging. In attempting to 
reconcile scientific truth with the oldest tradi- 
tions of humanity, there is but one serious 
danger, the loss of intellectual integrity. Of 
that possession modern society has little left 
to lose. 

But let us understand that the intellectual 
life and the religious life are as distinct as the 
scientific and the artistic lives. They may 
be led by the same person, but by the same 
person in different moods. They coincide on 
some points, accidentally. Certainly, the 
basis of high thinking is perfect honesty, and 
honesty is a recognized religious virtue. 
"Where the two. minds differ is on the impor- 
tance of authority. The religious life is 
based upon authority, the intellectual life is 
based upon personal investigation. From the 
intellectual point of view I cannot advise 
you to restrain the spirit of investigation, 
which is the scientific spirit. It may lead 



276 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

you very far, yet always to truth, ultimately, 
— you, or those after you, whose path you 
may be destined to prepare. Science requires 
a certain inward heat and heroism in her vo- 
taries, notwithstanding the apparent coldness 
of her statements. Especially does she re- 
quire that intellectual fearlessness which ac- 
cepts a proved fact without reference to its 
personal or its social consequences. 



LETTER V. 

TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO 
HIMSELF, INTELLECTUALLY, FROM THE NA- 
TURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 

Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman — Religious belief protects tra- 
ditions, but does not weaken the critical faculty itself — 
Illustration from the art of etching — Sydney Smith — Dr. 
Arnold — Earnest religious belief of Ampere — Comte and 
Sainte-Beuve— Faraday— Belief or unbelief proves nothing 
for or against intellectual capacity. 

I happened once to be travelling in Switzer- 
land with an eminent citizen of that country, 
and I remember how in speaking of some 
place we passed through he associated to- 
gether the ideas of Protestantism and intel- 
lectual superiority in some such phrase as 
this: "The people here are very superior; 
they are Protestants." There seemed to ex- 
ist, in my companion's mind, an assumption 
that Protestants would be superior people in- 
tellectually, or that superior people would be 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. -77 

Protestants ; and this set me thinking whether, 
in the course of such experience as had fallen 
in my way, I had found that religious creed 
had made much difference in the matter of 
intellectual acumen or culture. 

The exact truth appears to be this. A re- 
ligious belief protects this or that subject 
against intellectual action, but it does not 
affect the energy of the intellectual action up- 
on subjects which are' not so protected. Let 
me illustrate this by a reference to one of the 
fine arts, the art of etching. The etcher pro- 
tects a copper-plate by means of a waxy cover- 
ing called etching-ground, and wherever this 
ground is removed the acid bites the copper. 
The waxy ground does not in the least affect 
the strength of the acid, it only intervenes 
between it and the metal plate. So it is in the 
mind of man with regard to his intellectual 
acumen and his religious creed. The creed 
may protect a tradition from the operation of 
the critical faculty, but it does not weaken 
the critical faculty itself. In the English 
Church, for example, the Bible is protected 
against criticism; but this does not weaken 
the critical faculty of English clergymen 
with reference to other literature, and many 
of them give evidence of a strong critical 
faculty in all matters not protected by their 
creed. Think of the vigorous common sense 
of Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at 
a time when it needed not only much courage 
but great originality to expose them! Be- 
member the intellectual force of Arnold, a 



278 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

great natural force if ever there was one — so 
direct in action, so independent of contemp- 
orary opinion! Intellectual forces of this 
kind act freely not only in the Church of 
England, but in other Churches, even in the 
Church of Eome. Who amongst the scien- 
tific men of this century has been more pro- 
foundly scientific, more capable of original 
scientific discovery than Ampere? Yet Am- 
pere was a Roman Catholic, and not a Ro- 
man Catholic in the conventional sense 
merely, like the majority of educated French- 
men, but a hearty and enthusiastic believer 
in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. 
The belief in transubstantiation did not pre- 
vent Ampere from becoming one of the best 
chemists of his time, just as the belief in the 
plenary inspiration of the New Testament 
does not prevent a good Protestant from be- 
coming an acute critic of Greek literature 
generally. A man may have the finest scien- 
tific faculty, the most advanced scientific 
culture, and still believe the consecrated wa- 
fer to the body of Jesus Christ. For since 
he still believes it to be the body of Christ un- 
der the apparent form of a wafer, it is evident 
that the wafer under chemical analysis would 
resolve itself into the same elements as before 
consecration ; therefore why consult chemis- 
try? What has chemistry to say to a mys- 
tery of this kind, the essence of which is the 
complete disguise of a human body under a 
form in all respects answering the material 
semblance of a wafer? Ampere must have 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION. 270 

foreseen the certain, results of analysis as 
clearly as the best chemist educated in the 
principles of Protestantism, but this did not 
prevent him from adoring the consecrated 
host in all the sincerity of his heart. 

I say that it does not follow, because M. or 
N. happens to be a Protestant, that he is in- 
tellectually superior to Ampere, or because 
M. or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, 
or a Positivist, that he is intellectually supe- 
rior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on 
the other side of this question it is equally 
unfair to conclude that because a man does 
not share whatever may be our theological 
beliefs on the positive side, he must be less 
capable intellectually than we are. Two of 
the finest and most disciplined modern intel- 
lects, Comte and Sainte-Beuve, were neither 
Catholics, nor Protestants, nor Deists, but 
convinced atheists; yet Comte until the pe- 
riod of his decline, and Sainte-Beuve up to the 
very hour of his death, were quite in the 
highest rank of modern scientific and literary 
intellect. 

The inference from these facts which con- 
cerns every one of us is, that we are not to 
build up any edifice of intellectual self-satis- 
faction on the ground that in theological 
matters we believe or disbelieve this thing or 
that. If Ampere believed the doctrines of 
the Church of Rome, which to us seem so in- 
credible, if Faraday remained throughout his 
brilliant intellectual career (certainly one of 
the most brilliant ever lived through by a 



280 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

human being) a sincere member of the ob- 
scure sect of the Sandemanians, we are not 
warranted in .the conclusion that we are in- 
tellectually their betters because our theology 
is more novel, or more fashionable, or more 
in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other 
hand, does our orthodoxy prove anything in 
favor of our mental force and culture. Who, 
amongst the most orthodox writers, has a 
more forcible and cultivated intellect than 
Sainte-Beuve? — who can better give us the 
tone of perfect culture, with its love of jus- 
tice, its thoroughness in preparation, its su- 
periority to all crudeness and violence? An- 
glican or Eomanist, dissenter or heretic, may 
be our master in the intellectual sphere, from 
which no sincere and capable laborer is ex- 
cluded, either by his belief or by his unbelief. 



LETTER VI. 

TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED 
THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS OP A WANT OF 
REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY. 

Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful— 
The Papal Infallibility— The Infallibility of the Sacred 
Scriptures—Opposition of method between Intellect and 
Faith — The perfection of the intellectual life requires in- 
tellectual methods— Inevitable action of the intellectual 
forces. 

It is very much the custom, in modern 
writing about liberty of thought, to pass 
lightly over the central difficulty, which 
sooner or later will have to be considered. 



CUSTOM AN I) TRADITION. 281 

The difficulty is this, that the freedom of the 
intellectual life can never be secured except 
by treating as if they were doubtful several 
affirmations which large masses of mankind 
hold to be certainties as indisputable as the 
facts of science. One of the most recently 
conspicuous of these affirmations is the infal- 
libility of the Pope of Rome. Nothing can 
be more certain in the opinion of immense 
numbers of Roman Catholics than the infalli- 
ble authority of the Supreme Pontiff on all 
matters affecting doctrine. But then the 
matters affecting doctrine include many sub- 
jects which come within the circle of the 
sciences. History is one of those subjects 
which modern intellectual criticism takes 
leave to study after its own methods, and yet 
certain [prevalent views of history are offen- 
sive to the Pope and explicitly condemned by 
him. The consequence is, that in order to 
study history with mental liberty, we have 
to act practically as if there existed a doubt 
of the Papal infallibility. The same difficulty 
occurs with reference to the great Protestant 
doctrine which attributes a similar infalli- 
bility to the various authors who composed 
what are now known to us as the Holy Script- 
ures. Our men of science act, and the laws 
of scientific investigation compel them to act, 
as if it were not quite certain that the views 
of scientific subjects held by those early 
writers were so final as to render modern in- 
vestigation superfluous. It is useless to dis- 
guise the fact that there is a real opposition 



282 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of method between intellect and faith, and 
that the independence of the intellectual life 
can never be fully secured unless all affirma- 
tions based upon authority are treated as if 
they were doubtful. This implies no change 
of manner in the intellectual classes towards 
those classes whose mental habits are founded 
upon obedience. I mean that the man of sci- 
ence does not treat the affirmations of any 
priesthood with less respect than the affirma- 
tions of his own scientific brethren; he ap- 
plies with perfect impartiality the same criti- 
cism to all affirmations, from whatever source 
they emanate. The intellect does not recog- 
nize authority in any one, and intellectual 
men do not treat the Pope, or the author of 
Genesis, with less consideration than those 
famous persons who in their day have been 
the brightest luminaries of science. The dif- 
ficulty, however, remains, that whilst the in- 
tellectual class has no wish to offend either 
those who believe in the infallibility of the 
Pope, or those who believe in the infallibility 
of the author of Genesis, it is compelled to 
conduct its own investigations as if those in- 
fallibilities were matters of doubt and not of 
certainty. 

Why this is so, may be shown by a refer- 
ence to the operation of Nature in other ways. 
The rewards of physical strength and health 
are not given to the most moral, to the most 
humane, to the most gentle, but to those who 
have acted, and whose forefathers have acted, 
in the most perfect accordance with the laws 



CUSTOM AND TRADITION, 283 

of their physical constitution. So the perfec- 
tion of the intellectual life is not given to the 
most humble, the most believing, the most 
obedient, but to those who use their minds 
according to the most purely intellectual meth- 
ods. . One of the most important truths that 
human beings can know is the perfectly in- 
dependent working of the natural laws : one 
of the best practical conclusions to be drawn 
from the observation of Nature is that in the 
conduct of our own understandings we should 
use a like independence. 

It would be wrong, in writing to you on 
subjects so important as these, to shrink from 
handling the real difficulties. Every one now 
is aware that science must and will pursue 
her own methods and work according to her 
own laws, without concerning herself with 
the most authoritative affirmations from with- 
out. But if science said one thing and au- 
thoritative tradition said another, no perfectly 
ingenuous person could rest contented until 
he had either reconciled the two or decidedly 
rejected one of them. It is impossible for a 
mind which is honest towards itself to admit 
that a proposition is true and false at the same 
time, true in science and false in theology. 
Therefore, although the intellectual methods 
are entirely independent of tradition, it may 
easily happen that the indirect results of our 
following those methods may be the over- 
throw of some dogma which has for many 
generations been considered indispensable to 
man's spiritual welfare. With regard to this 



284 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

contingency it need only be observed that 
the intellectual forces of humanity must act, 
like floods and winds, according to their own 
laws ; and that if they cast down any edifice 
too weak to resist them, it must be because 
the original constructors had not built it sub- 
stantially, or because those placed in charge 
of it had neglected to keep it in repair. This 
is their business, not ours. Our work is sim- 
ply to ascertain truth by our own independ- 
ent methods, alike without hostility to any 
persons claiming authority, and without def- 
erence to them. 



PART VII 

WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 



LETTER I. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF INTELLECTUAL 
TASTES, WHO, WITHOUT HAYING AS YET ANY 
PARTICULAR LADY IN VIEW, HAD EXPRESSED, 
IN A GENERAL WAY, HIS DETERMINATION TO 
GET MARRIED. 

How ignorant we all are about marriage -People wrong in 
their estimates of the marriages of others — Effects of mar- 
riage on the intellectual life — Two courses open — A wife 
who would not interfere with elevated pursuits — A wife 
capable of understanding them— Madame Ingres — Differ- 
ence in the education of the sexes —Difficulty of educating 
a wife. 

The subject of marriage is one concerning 
which neither I nor anybody else can have 
more than an infinitesimally small atom of 
knowledge. Each of us knows how his or 
her own marriage has turned out ; but that, 
in comparison with a knowledge of marriage 
generally, is like a single plant in comparison 
with the flora of the globe. The utmost ex- 
perience on this subject to be found in this 
country extends to about three trials or ex- 
periments. A man may become twice a wid- 
ower, and then marry a third time, but it 
may be easily shown that the variety of his 



280 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

experience is more than counterbalanced ]by 
its incompleteness in each instance. For the 
experiment to be conclusive even as to the 
wisdom of one decision, it must extend over 
half a lifetime. A true marriage is not a 
mere temporary arrangement, and although 
a young couple are said to be married as soon 
as the lady has changed her name, the truth 
is that the real marriage is a long slow inter- 
growth, like that of two trees planted quite 
close together in the forest. 

The subject of marriage generally is one of 
which men know less than they know of any 
other subject of universal interest. People 
are almost always wrong in their estimates of 
the marriages of others, and the best proof 
how little we know the real tastes and needs 
of those with whom we have been most inti- 
mate, is our unfailing surprise at the mar- 
riages they make. Very old and experienced 
people fancy they know a great deal about 
younger couples, but their guesses, there is 
good reason to believe, never exactly hit the 
mark. 

Ever since this idea, that marriage is a sub- 
ject we are all very ignorant about, had taken 
root in my own mind, many little incidents 
were perpetually occurring to confirm it ; they 
proved to rne, on the one hand, how often I 
had been mistaken about other people, and, 
on the other hand, how mistaken other peo- 
ple were concerning the only marriage I pro- 
fess to know anything about, namely, my 
own. 



WOMEN AND MAURI AGE. 287 

Our ignorance is all the darker that few 
men tell us the little that they know, that lit- 
tle being too closely bound up with that in- 
nermost privacy of life which every man of 
right feeling respects in his own case, as in 
the case of another. The only instances 
which are laid bare to the public view are the 
unhappy marriages, which are really not mar- 
riages at all. An unhappy alliance bears ex- 
actly the same relation to a true marriage 
that disease does to health, and the quarrels 
and misery of it are the crises by which Na- 
ture tries to bring about either the recovery 
of happiness, or the endurable peace of a set- 
tled separation. 

All that we really know about marriage is 
that it is based upon the most powerful of all 
our instincts, and that it shows its own justi- 
fication in its fruits, especially in the pro- 
longed and watchful care of children. But 
marriage is very complex in its effects, and 
there is one set of effects, resulting from it, to 
which remarkably little attention has been 
paid hitherto, — I mean its effects upon the in- 
tellectual life. Surely they deserve consider- 
ation by all who value culture. 

I believe that for an intellectual man, only 
two courses are open; either he ought to 
marry some simple dutiful woman who will 
bear him children, and see to the household 
matters, and love him in a trustful spirit with- 
out jealousy of his occupations; or else, on 
the other hand, he ought to marry some highly 
intelligent lady, able to carry her education 



288 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

far beyond school experiences, and willing to 
become his companion in the arduous paths 
of intellectual labor. The danger in the first 
of the two cases is that pointed out by Words- 
worth in some verses addressed to lake-tour- 
ists who might feel inclined to buy a peasant's 
cottage in Westmoreland. The tourist would 
spoil the little romantic spot if he bought it ; 
the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the 
poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed 
away by the influence of the things that are 
necessary to people in the middle class. I 
remember dining in a country inn with an 
English officer whose ideas were singularly 
unconventional. We were waited upon by 
our host's daughter, a beautiful girl, whose 
manners were remarkable for their natural 
elegance and distinction. It seemed to us 
both that no lady of rank could be more dis- 
tinguished than she was ; and my companion 
said that he thought a gentleman might do 
worse than ask that girl to marry him, and 
settle down quietly in that quiet mountain 
village, far from the cares and vanities of the 
world. That is a sort of dream which has oc- 
curred no doubt to many an honorable man. 
Some men have gone so far as to try to make 
the dream a reality, and have married the 
beautiful peasant. But the difficulty is that 
she does not remain what she was ; she be- 
comes a sort of make-belief lady, and then her 
ignorance, which in her natural condition was 
a charming naivete, becomes an irritating de- 
fect. If ; however, it were possible for an in- 



WOMEN AND MAlilUAGE. 289 

tellectual man to marry some simple-hearted 
peasant girl, and keep her carefully in her 
original condition, I seriously believe that the 
venture would be less perilous to his culture 
than an alliance with some woman of our 
Philistine classes, equally incapable of com- 
prehending his pursuits, but much more like- 
ly to interfere with them. I once had a con- 
versation on this subject with a distinguished 
artist, who is now a widower, and who is cer- 
tainly not likely to be prejudiced against mar- 
riage by his own experience, which had been 
an unusually happy one. His view was that 
a man devoted to art might marry either a 
plain-minded woman, who would occupy her- 
self exclusively with household matters and 
shield his peace by taking these cares upon 
herself, or else a woman quite capable of en- 
tering into his artistic life ; but he was con- 
vinced that a marriage which exposed him to 
unintelligent criticism and interference would 
be dangerous in the highest degree. And of 
the two kinds of marriage which he consid- 
ered possible he preferred the former, that 
with the entirely ignorant and simple person < 
from whom no interference was to be appre- 
hended. He considered the first Madame In- 
gres the true model of an artist's wife, be- 
cause she did all in her power to guard her 
husband's peace against the daily cares of life 
and never herself disturbed it, acting the part 
of a breakwater which protects a space of 
calm, and never destroys the peace that it 
has made. This may be true for artists whose 
19 



290 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

occupation is rather aesthetic than intellect- 
ual, and does not get much help or benefit 
from talk ; but the ideal marriage for a man 
of great literary culture would be one permit- 
ting some equality of companionship, or, if 
not equality, at least interest. That this ideal 
is not a mere dream, but may consolidate into 
a happy reality, several examples prove ; yet 
these examples are not so numerous as to re- 
lieve me from anxiety about your chances of 
finding such companionship. The different 
education of the two sexes separates them 
widely at the beginning, and to meet on any 
common ground of culture a second educa- 
tion has to be gone through. It rarely hap- 
pens that there is resolution enough for this. 

The want of thoroughness and reality in 
the education of both sexes, but especially in 
that of women, may be attributed to a sort of 
policy which is not very favorable to com- 
panionship in married life. It appears to be 
thought wise to teach boys things which 
women do not learn, in order to give women 
a degree of respect for men's attainments, 
which they would not be so likely to feel if 
they were prepared to estimate them criti- 
cally; whilst girls are taught arts and lan- 
guages which until recently were all but ex- 
cluded from our public schools, and won no 
rank at our universities. Men and women 
had consequently scarcely any common 
ground to meet upon, and the absence of se- 
rious mental discipline in the training of 
women made them indisposed to submit to 



WOMEN AND MABBIAGE. 291 

the irksomeness of that earnest intellectual 
labor which might have remedied the defi- 
ciency. The total lack of accuracy in their 
mental habits was then, and is still for the 
immense majority of women, the least easily 
surmountable impediment to culture. The 
history of many marriages which have failed 
to realize intellectual companionship is com- 
prised in a sentence which was actually ut- 
tered by one of the most accomplished of my 
friends: "She knew nothing when I married 
her. I tried to teach her something ; it made 
her angry, and I gave it up." 



LETTEE II. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED 
MARRIAGE. 

The foundations of the intellectual marriage — Marriage not a 
snare or pitfall for the intellectual — Men of culture, who 
marry badly, often have themselves to blame — For every 
grade of the masculine intellect there exists-a correspond- 
ing grade of the feminine intellect— Difficulty of finding 
the true mate — French University Prof essors — An extreme 
case of intellectual separation— Regrets of a widow- 
Women help us less by adding to our knowledge than 
by understanding us. 

In several letters which have preceded this 
I have indicated some of the differences be- 
tween the female sex and ours, and it is time 
to examine the true foundations of the intel- 
lectual marriage. Let me affirm, to begin 
with, my profound faith in the natural ar- 
rangement. There is in nature so much evi- 



292 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

dent care for the development of the intel- 
lectual life, so much protection of it in the so 
cial order, there are such admirable contri- 
vances for continuing it from century to cent- 
ury, that we may fairly count upon some 
provision for its necessities in marriage. In- 
tellectual men are not less alive to the charms 
of women than other men are ; indeed the 
greatest of them have always delighted in the 
society of women. If marriage were really 
dangerous to the intellectual life, it would be 
a moral snare or pitfall, from which the best 
and noblest would be least likely to escape. 
It is hard to believe that the strong passions 
which so often accompany high intellectual 
gifts were intended either to drive their pos- 
sessors into immorality or else to the misery 
of ill-assorted unions. 

No, there is such a thing as the intellectual 
marriage, in which the intellect itself is mar- 
ried. If such marriages are not frequent, it 
is that they are not often made the deliberate 
purpose of a wise alliance. Men choose their 
wives because they are pretty, or because 
they are rich, or because they are well-con- 
nected, but rarely for the permanent interest 
of their society. Yet who that had ever been 
condemned to the dreadful embarrassments 
of a tete-a-tete with an uncompanionable per- 
son, could reflect without apprehension on a 
lifetime of such tete-a-tetesf 

When intellectual men suffer from this 
misery they have themselves to blame. 
What is the use of having any mental supe- 



WOMEN A Nl) MA tt BIA GE. 293 

riority, if, in a matter so enormously impor- 
tant as the choice of a companion for life, it 
fails to give us a warning when the choice is 
absurdly unsuitable? When men complain, 
as they do not unfrequently, that their wives 
have no ideas, the question inevitably sug- 
gests itself, why the superiority of the mascu- 
line intellect did not, in these cases, permit it 
to discover the defect in time? If we are so 
clever as to be bored by ordinary women, 
why cannot our cleverness find out the femi- 
nine cleverness which would respond to it? 

What I am going to say now is in its very 
nature incapable of proof, and yet the longer 
I live the more the truth of it is "borne in 
upon me." I feel convinced that for every 
grade of the masculine intellect there exists a 
corresponding grade of the feminine intellect, 
so that a precisely suitable intellectual mar- 
riage is always possible for every one. But 
since the higher intellects are rare, and rare 
in proportion to their elevation, it follows that 
the difficulty of finding the true mate increases 
with the mental strength and culture of the 
man. If the "mental princes," as Blake 
called himself, are to marry the mental prin- 
cesses, they will not always discover them 
quite so easily as kings' sons find kings' 
daughters. 

This difficulty of finding the true mate is 
the real reason why so many clever men marry 
silly or stupid women. The women about 
them seem to be all very much alike, mentally ; 
it seems hopeless to expect any real compan- 



294 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

ionship, and the clever men are decided by 
the color of a girl's eyes, or a thousand pounds 
more in her dowry, or her relationship to a 
peer of the realm. 

It was remarked to me by a French univer- 
sity professor, that although men in his po- 
sition had on the whole much more culture 
than the middle class, they had an extraordi- 
nary talent for winning the most vulgar and 
ignorant wives. The explanation is, that 
their marriages are not intellectual marriages 
at a] 1. The class of French professors is not ad- 
van tageously situated; it has not great facil- 
ities for choice. Their incomes are so small 
that, unless helped by private means, the first 
thing they can prudently look to in a wife ie 
her utility as a domestic servant, which, in 
fact, it is her destiny to become. The intel- 
lectual disparity is from the beginning likely 
to be very great, because the professor is con- 
fined to the country -town where his Lycee 
happens to be situated, and in that town he 
does not always see the most cultivated soci- 
ety. He may be an intellectual prince, but 
where is he to find his princess? The mar- 
riage begins without the idea of intellectual 
companionship, and it continues as it began. 
The girl was uneducated ; it seems hopeless to 
try to educated the woman ; and then there is 
the supreme difficulty, only to be overcome 
by two wills at once most resolute and most 
persistent, namely, how to find the time. 
Years pass ; the husband is occupied all day ; 
the wife needs to cheer herself with a little so* 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 295 

ciety, and goes to sit with neighbors who are 
not likely to add anything valuable to her 
knowledge or to give any elevation to her 
thoughts. Then conies the final fixing and 
crystallization of her intellect, after which, 
however much pains and labor might be taken 
by the pair, she is past the possibility of 
change. 

These women are often so good and devoted 
that their husbands enjoy great happiness; 
but it is a kind of happiness curiously inde- 
pendent of the lady's presence. The professor 
may love his wife, and fully appreciate her 
qualities as a housekeeper, but he passes a 
more interesting evening with some male 
friend whose reading is equal to his own. 
Sometimes the lady perceives this, and it is an 
element of sadness in her life. 

"I never see my husband," she tells you, 
not in anger. u His work occupies him all 
day, and in the evening he sees his friends." 
The pair walk out together twice a week. I 
sometimes wonder what they say to each 
other during those conjugal promenades. 
They talk about their children, probably, and 
the little recurring difficulties about money. 
He cannot talk about his studies, or the in- 
tellectual speculations which his studies con- 
tinually suggest. 

The most extreme cases of intellectual sepa- 
ration between husband and wife that ever 
came under my observation was, however, 
not that of a French professor, but a highly 
cultivated Scotch lawyer. He was one of the 



296 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

most intellectual men I ever knew — a little 
cynical, but full of original power, and un- 
commonly well-informed. His theory was, 
that women ought not to be admitted into 
the region of masculine thought — that it was 
not good for them ; and he acted so consist- 
ently up to this theory, that although he 
would open his mind with the utmost frank- 
ness to a male acquaintance over the evening 
whisky-toddy, there was not whisky enough 
in all Scotland to make him frank in the 
presence of his wife. She really knew nothing 
whatever about his intellectual existence; 
and yet there was nothing in his ways of 
thinking which an honorable man need con- 
ceal from an intelligent woman. His theory 
worked well enough in practice, and his re- 
serve was so perfect that it may be doubted 
whether even feminine subtlety ever suspected 
it. The explanation of his system may per- 
haps have been this. He was an exceedingly 
busy man ; he felt that he had not time to teach 
his wife to know him as he was, and so pre- 
ferred to leave her with her own conception 
of him, rather than disturb that conception 
when he believed it impossible to replace it 
by a completely true one. We all act in that 
way with those whom we consider quite ex- 
cluded from our private range of thought. 

All this may be very prudent and wise: 
there may be degrees of conjugal felicity, sat- 
isfactory in their way, without intellectual 
intercourse, and yet I cannot think that any 
man of high culture could regard his marriage 



WOMKX AXl) MARRIAGE. 207 

as altogether a successful one so long as his 
wife remained shut out from his mental life. 
Nor is the exclusion always quite agreeable 
to the lady herself. A widow said to me 
that her husband had never thought it nec- 
essary to try to raise her to his own level, 
yeV she believed that with his kindly help 
she might have attained it. 

You with your masculine habits, may ob- 
serve, as to this, that if the lady had seriously 
cared to attain a higher level she might have 
achieved it by her own private independent 
effort. But this is exactly what the feminine 
nature never does. A clever woman is the 
best of pupils, when she loves her teacher, but 
the worst of solitary learners. 

It is not by adding to our knowledge, but 
by understanding us, that women are our 
helpers. They understand us far better than 
men do, when once they have the degree of 
preliminary information which enables them 
to enter into our pursuits. Men are occupied 
with their personal works and thoughts, and 
have wonderfully little sympathy left to en- 
able them to comprehend us ; but a woman; 
by her divine sympathy — divine indeed, since 
it was given by God for this— can enter into 
our inmost thought, and make allowances for 
all our difficulties. Talk about your work 
and its anxieties to a club of masculine friends, 
they will give very little heed to you; they 
are all thinking about themselves, and they 
will dislike your egotism because they have 
so much egotism of their own, which yours 



298 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

invades and inconveniences. But talk in the 
same way to any woman who has education 
enough to enable her to follow you, and she 
will listen so kindly, and so very intelligently, 
that you will be betrayed into interminable 
confidences. 

Now, although an intellectual man may not 
care to make himself understood by all the 
people in the street, it is not a good thing for 
him to feel that he is understood by nobody. 
The intellectual life is sometimes a fearfully 
solitary one. Unless he lives in a great capi- 
tal the man devoted to that life is more than 
all other men liable to suffer from isolation, 
to feel utterly alone beneath the deafness of 
space and the silence of the stars. Give him 
one friend who can understand him, who will 
not leave him, who will always be accessible 
by day and night — one friend, one kindly 
listener, just one, and the whole universe is 
changed. It is deaf and indifferent no longer, 
and whilst she listens, it seems as if all men 
and angels listened also, so perfectly his 
thought is mirrored in the light of her answer- 
ing eyes. 



WOMES AyD MARRIAGE. 299 



LETTER III. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED 
MARRIAGE. 

The intellectual ideal of marriage— The danger of dulness— 
To be counteracted only by the renewal of both minds — 
Example of Lady Baker — Separation of the sexes by an 
old prejudice about education— This prejudice on the de- 
cline—Influence of the late Prince Consort. 

How far may you hope to realize the intel- 
lectual ideal of marriage? Have I ever ob- 
served in actual life any approximate realiza- 
tion of that ideal? 

These are the two questions which conclude 
and epitomize the last of your recent letters. 
Let me endeavor to answer them as satisfac- 
torily as the obscurity of the subject will per- 
mit. 

The intellectual ideal seems to be that of a 
conversation on all the subjects you most care 
about, which should never lose its interest. 
Is it possible that two people should live to- 
gether and talk to each other every day for 
twenty years without knowing each other's 
views too well for them to seem worth ex- 
pressing or worth listening to? There are 
friends whom we know too well, so that our 
talk with them has less of refreshment and 
entertainment than a conversation with the 
first intelligent stranger on the quarter-deck 
of the steamboat. It is evident that from the 
intellectual point of view this is the great 
danger of marriage. It may become dull, 



300 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

not because the mental force of either of the 
parties- has declined, but because each has 
come to know so accurately beforehand what 
the other will say on any given topic, that 
inquiry is felt to be useless. This too perfect 
intimacy, which has ended many a friend- 
ship outside of marriage, may also terminate 
the intellectual life in matrimony itself. 

Let us not pass too lightly over this danger, 
for it is not to be denied. Unless carefully 
provided against, it will gradually extinguish 
the light that plays between the wedded in- 
telligences as the electric light burns between 
two carbon points. 

I venture to suggest, however, that this 
evil may be counteracted by persons of some 
energy and originality. This is one of those 
very numerous cases in which an evil is sure 
to arrive if nothing is done to prevent it, yet 
in which the evil need not arrive when those 
whom it menaces are forewarned. To take 
an illustration intelligible in these days of 
steam-engines. We know that if the water 
is allowed to get very low in the boiler a de- 
structive explosion will be the consequence ; 
yet, since every stoker is aware of this, such 
explosions are not of frequent occurrence. 
That evil is continually approaching and yet 
continually averted by the exercise of human 
foresight. 

Let us suppose that a married couple are 
clearly aware that in the course of years their 
society is sure to become mutually uninter- 
esting unless something is done to preserve 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 301 

the earlier zest of it. What is that some- 
thing? 

That which an author does for the unknown 
multitude of his readers. 

Every author who succeeds takes the 
trouble to renew his mind either by fresh 
knowledge or new thoughts. Is it not at least 
equally worth while to do as much to preserve 
the interest of marriage ? Without undervalu- 
ing the friendly adhesion of many readers, 
without affecting any contempt for fame, 
which is dearer to the human heart than 
wealth itself whenever it appears to be not 
wholly unattainable, may not I safely affirm 
that the interest of married life, from its very 
nearness, has a still stronger influence upon 
the mind of any thinking person, of either sex, 
than the approbation of unnumbered readers 
in distinct countries or continents ? You never 
see the effect of your thinking on your read- 
ers ; they live and die far away from you, a 
few write letters of praise or criticism, the 
thousands give no sign. But the wife is with 
you always, she is almost as near to you as 
your own body ; the world, to you, is a fig- 
ure-picture in which there is one figure, the 
rest is merely background. And if an author 
takes pains to renew his mind for the people 
in the background, is it not at least equally 
worth your while to bring fresh thought for 
the renewal of your life with her? 

This, then, is my theory of the intellectual 
marriage, that the two wedded intellects 
ought, to renew themselves continually for 



302 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

each other. And l argue that if this were 
done in earnest, the otherwise inevitable dut 
ness would be perpetually kept at bay. 

To theother question, whether in actual life 
1 have ever seen this realised, l answer yes, 
in several instances* 

Not in very many instances, yet in more 

thauono. Women, when they have conceived 
the idea that this renewal is necessary, have 

resolution enough for the realization of it. 
There IS hardl\ any task too hard for them, 
if they believe it ossential to the conjugal life. 
I could give you the name and address o( one 
who mastered Greek in order not to be o\ 

eluded from her husband's favorite pursuit ; 
others have mastered other languages for the 
same object, and even some branch o( science 
for which the feminine mind has less natural 

affinity than it has iov imaginative litera- 
ture. Their remarkable incapacity for iiule 
pendent mental labor is accompanied by an 

equally remarkable capacity for labor under 
an accepted masculine guidance, in this 
connection l may without impropriety men 
tion one Englishwoman, for she is already 
celebrated, thewifeof Sir Samuel Baker, the 

discoverer of the Albert Xyan/.a. She stood 
with him on the shore of that unknown sea, 
when first it was beheld by English eyes; she 
had passed with him through all the hard pre- 
liminary toils and trials. She had learned 
Arabic with him in a year o( necessary but 
wearisome delay ; her mind had travelled with 
his mind as her feet had followed his footsteps. 



WOMEJS -l VD MARRIAGE, 308 

Scarcely less beautiful, if less heroic, is the 
picture of the geologist's wife, Mrs. Buckland, 
who taught herself f<> reconstruct broken Cos 
sils, and <li<l it with a surprising delicacy, and 
patience, and skill, full of science, yet more 
than science, the perfection of feminine art. 

The privacy of married life often prevents 
us from knowing the extent to which intelli 
gent women have renewed their minds by 
fresh and varied culture lor the purpose ol re- 
taining their ascendency over their husbands, 
or to keep up the interest of their lives. It is 
done much more Frequently by women than 
by men. They have so much less egotism, so 
much more adaptability, that they lit them 

selves to us oftener than we adapt ourselves 

to them. But in a quiet perfect marriage these 

efforts would he mutual, 'the husband would 
endeavor to make life interesting to his com 

pan ion by taking a share in some pursuit which 

was really her own. It is easier For us than 
it was for our ancestors to do this at. least 

lor oui- immediate ancestors. There existed, 
ftfty years ago, a, most irrational prejudice, 
xvvy strongly rooted in the social conventions 

Of the time, about masculine arid feminine ac- 
complishments. The educations of the two 

sexes were so trenchantly separated that 
neither had aC36SS to the knowledge of the 

other. The men had learned Latin and Greek, 

of which the women were i-nornnf; the 
women had learned French or Italian, which 
the men could neither read nor speak. The 

ladies studied flue art, not seriously, hut itoccu- 



304 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

pied a good deal of their time and thoughts; 
the gentlemen had a manly contempt for it, 
which kept them, as contempt always does, in 
a state of absolute ignorance. The intellectual 
separation of the sexes was made as complete 
as possible by the conventionally received idea 
that a man could not learn what girls learned 
without effeminacy, and that if women aspired 
to men's knowledge they would forfeit the 
delicacy of their sex. This illogical prejudice 
was based on a bad syllogism of this kind : — 
Girls speak French, and learn music and 

drawing. 
Benjamin speaks French, and learns music 

and drawing. 
Benjamin is a girl. 

And the prejudice, powerful as it was, had 
not even the claim of any considerable antiq- 
uity. Think how strange and unreasonable 
it would have seemed to Lady Jane Grey and 
Sir Philip Sidney ! In their time, ladies and 
gentlemen studied the same things, the world 
of culture was the same for both, and they 
could meet in it as in a garden. 

Happily we are coming back to the old ra- 
tional notion of culture as independent of the 
question of sex. Latin and Greek are not un- 
feminine; they were spoken by women in 
Athens and Rome ; the modern languages are 
fit for a man to learn, since men use them 
continually on the battle-fields and in the par- 
liaments and exchanges of the world. Art is 
a manly business, if ever any human occupa- 
tion could be called manly, for the utmost 



WOMEN AND MA1UUAGE. 305 

efforts of the strongest men are needed for 
success in it. 

The increasing interest in the fine arts, the 
more important position given to modern lan- 
guages in the universities, the irresistible at- 
tractions and growing authority of science, 
all tend to bring men and women together on 
subjects understood by both, and therefore 
operate directly in favor of intellectual inter- 
ests in marriage. You will not suspect me of 
a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royal- 
ty if I trace some of these changes in public 
opinion to the example and influence of the 
Prince Consort, operating with some effect 
during his life, yet with far greater force 
since he was taken away from us. The truth 
is, that the most modern English ideal of gen- 
tlemanly culture is that which Prince Albert, 
to a great extent, realized in his own person. 
Perhaps his various accomplishments may be 
a little embellished or exaggerated in the pop- 
ular belief, but it is unquestionable that his 
notion of culture was very large and liberal, 
and quite beyond the narrow pedantry of the 
preceding age. There was nothing in it to 
exclude a woman, and we know that she who 
loved him entered largely into the works and 
recreations of his life. 
20 



306 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER IV. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED 
MARRIAGE. 

Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor — 
Their resignation to ignorance — Absence of scientific curi- 
osity in women — They do not accumulate accurate knowl- 
edge—Archimedes in his bath— Rarity of inventions due to 
women — Exceptions. 

Before saying much about the influence of 
marriage on the intellectual life, it is neces- 
sary to make some inquiry into the intellect- 
ual nature of women. 

The first thing to be noted is that, with ex- 
ceptions so rare as to be practically of no 
importance to an argument, women do not 
of themselves undertake intellectual labor. 
Even in the situations most favorable for labor 
of that kind, women do not undertake it un- 
less they are urged to it, and directed in it, by 
some powerful masculine influence. In the 
absence of that influence, although their minds 
are active, that activity neither tends to dis- 
cipline nor to the accumulation of knowledge. 
Women who are not impelled by some mas- 
culine influence are not superior, either in 
knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the 
age of fifty to what they were at the age of 
twenty-five. In other words, they have not 
in themselves the motive powers which can 
cause an intellectual advance. 

The best illustration of this is a sisterhood 
of three or four rich old maids, with all the 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 307 

advantages of leisure. You will observe that 
they invariably remain, as to their education, 
where they were left by their teachers many 
years before. They will often lament, per- 
haps, that in their day education was very in- 
ferior to what it is now ; but it never occurs 
to them that the large leisure of subsequent 
years might, had it been well employed, have 
supplied those deficiencies of which they are 
sensible. Nothing is more curiously remote 
from masculine habits than the resignation to 
particular degrees of ignorance, as to the in- 
evitable, which a woman will express in a 
manner which says : ' ' You know I am so ; you 
know that I cannot make myself better in- 
formed/' They are like perfect billiard-balls 
on a perfect table, which stop when no longer 
impelled, wherever they may happen to be. 

It is this absence of intellectual initiative 
which causes the great ignorance of women. 
What they have been well taught, that they 
know, but they do not increase their stores of 
knowledge. Even in what most interests 
them, theology, they repeat, but do not ex- 
tend, their information. All the effort of their 
minds appears (so far as an outside observer 
may presume to judge) to act like water on a 
picture, which brings out the colors that al- 
ready exist upon the canvas but does not add 
anything to the design. There is a great and 
perpetual freshness and vividness in their con- 
ceptions, which is often lacking in our own. 
Our conceptions fade, and are replaced ; theirs 
are not replaced, but refreshed. 



308 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

What many women do for their theological 
conceptions or opinions, others do with refer- 
ence to the innumerable series of questions of 
all kinds which present themselves in the 
course of life. They attempt to solve them 
by the help of knowledge acquired in girl- 
hood ; and if that cannot be done, they either 
give them up as beyond the domain of women, 
or else trust to hearsay for a solution. What 
they will not do is to hunt the matter out un- 
aided, and get an accurate answer by dint of 
independent investigation. 

There is another characteristic of women, 
not peculiar to them, for many men have it in 
an astonishing degree, and yet more general 
in the female sex than in the male : I allude 
to the absence of scientific curiosity. Ladies 
see things of the greatest wonder and interest 
working in their presence and for their ser- 
vice without feeling impelled to make any in- 
quiries into the manner of their working. I 
could mention many very curious instances 
of this, but I select one which seems typical. 
Many years ago I happened to be in a room 
filled with English ladies, most of whom were 
highly intelligent, and the conversation hap- 
pened to turn upon a sailing-boat which be- 
longed to me. One of the ladies observed 
that sails were not of much use, since they 
could only be available to push the boat in 
the direction of the wind ; a statement which 
all the other ladies received with approbation. 
Now, all these ladies had seen ships working 
under canvas against head-winds, and they 



IVOMEN AND MARBIAG&. 000 

might have reflected that without that por- 
tion of the art of seamanship every vessel un- 
provided with steam would assuredly drift 
upon a lee-shore ; but it was not in the fem- 
inine nature to make a scientific observation 
of that kind. You will answer, perhaps, that 
I could scarcely expect ladies to investigate 
men's business, and that seamanship is essen- 
tially the business of our own sex. But the 
truth is, that all English people, no matter of 
what sex, have so direct an interest in the 
maritime activity of England, that they might 
reasonably be expected to know the one pri- 
mary conquest on which for many centuries 
that activity has depended, the conquest of 
the opposing wind, the sublimest of the early 
victories of science. And this absence of 
curiosity in women extends to things they 
use every day. They never seem to want to 
know the insides of things as we do. All 
ladies know that steam makes a locomotive 
go ; but they rest satisfied with that, and do 
not inquire further how the steam sets the 
wheels in motion. They know that it is nec- 
essary to wind up their watches, but they do 
not care to inquire into the real effects of that 
little exercise of force. 

Now this absence of the investigating spirit 
has very wide and important consequences. 
The first consequence of it is that women do 
not naturally accumulate accurate know^l 
edge. Left to themselves, they accept various 
kinds of teaching, but they do not by any 
analysis of their own either put that teaching 



310 THE INTELLECTUAL LIEE. 

to any serious intellectual test, or qualify 
themselves for any extension of it by inde- 
pendent and original discovery. We of the 
male sex are seldom clearly aware how much 
of our practical force, of the force which dis- 
covers and originates, is due to our common 
habit of analytical observation; yet it is 
scarcely too much to say that most of our in- 
ventions have been suggested by actually or 
intellectually pulling something else in pieces. 
And such of our discoveries as cannot be 
traced directly to analysis are almost always 
due to habits of general observation which 
lead us to take note of some fact apparently 
quite remote from what it helps us to arrive 
at. One of the best instances of this indirect 
utility of habitual observation, as it is one of 
the earliest, is what occurred to Archimedes 
in his bath. When the water displaced by 
his body overflowed, he noticed the fact of 
displacement, and at once perceived its appli- 
cability to the cubic measurement of compli- 
cated bodies. It is possible that if his mind 
had not been exercised at the time about the 
adulteration of the royal crown, it would not 
have been led to anything by the overflowing 
of his bath ; but the capacity to receive a sug- 
gestion of that kind is, I believe, a capacity 
exclusively masculine. A woman would have 
noticed the overflowing, but she would have 
noticed it only as a cause of disorder or in- 
convenience. 

This absence of the investigating and dis 
covering tendencies in women is confirmed 



WOMEN AND M ABB 1 AGE. 311 

by the extreme rarity of inventions due to 
women, even in the things which most inter- 
est and concern them. The stocking-loom 
and the sewing-machine are the two inven- 
tions which would most naturally have been 
hit upon by women, for people are naturally 
inventive about things which relieve them- 
selves of labor, or which increase their own 
possibilities of production ; and yet the stock- 
ing-loom and the sewing-machine are both of 
them masculine ideas, carried out to practical 
efficiency by masculine energy and perse- 
verance. So I believe that all the improve- 
ments in pianos are due to men, though wom- 
en have used pianos much more than men 
have used them. 

This, then, is in my view the most impor- 
tant negative characteristic of women, that 
they do not push forwards intellectually by 
their own force. There have been a few in- 
stances in which they have written with 
power and originality, have become learned, 
and greatly superior, no doubt, to the major- 
ity of men. There are three or four women 
in England, and as many on the Continent, 
who have lived intellectually in harness for 
many years, and who unaffectedly delight in 
strenuous intellectual labor, giving evidence 
both of fine natural powers and the most per- 
severing culture ; but these women have usu- 
ally been encouraged in their work by some 
near masculine influence. And even if it 
were possible, which it is not, to point to 
some female Archimedes or Leonardo da 



312 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Vinci, it is not the rare exceptions which con- 
cern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature. 
Without desiring to compare our most . 
learned ladies with anything so disagreeable 
to the eye as a bearded woman, I may ob- 
serve that Nature generally has a few excep- 
tions to all her rules, and that as women hav- 
ing beards are a physical exception, so wom- 
en who naturally study and investigate are 
intellectual exceptions. Once more let me 
repudiate any malicious intention in estab- 
lishing so unfortunate and maladroite an as- 
sociation of ideas, for nothing is less agreea- 
ble than a woman with a beard, whilst, on 
the contrary, the most intellectual of women 
may at the same time be the most perma- 
nently charming. 



LETTER V. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO .CONTEMPLATED 

MARRIAGE. 
r 

The danger of deviation — Danger from increased expenditure 
' — Nowhere so great as in England— Complete absorption 
in business — Case of a tradesman— Case of a solicitor— 
The pursuit of comfort dangerous to the Intellectual Life 
— The meanness of its results — Fireside purposes — Danger 
of deviation in rich marriages— George Sand's study of 
this in her story of " ValvMre." 

Amongst the dangers of marriage, one of 
those most to be dreaded by a man given to 
intellectual pursuits is the deviation which, 
in one way or other, marriage inevitably 



WOMEN AND MA1UUAGE. 313 

produces. It acts like the pointsman on a 
railway, who, by pulling a lever, sends the 
train in another direction. The married man 
never goes, or hardly ever goes, exactly on 
the same intellectual lines which he would 
have followed if he had remained a bachelor. 
This deviation may or may not be a gain ; it 
is always a most serious danger. 

Sometimes the deviation is produced by the 
necessity for a stricter attention to money, 
causing a more unremitting application to 
work that pays well, and a proportionate neg- 
lect of that which can only give extension to 
our knowledge and clearness to our views. 

In no country is this danger so great as it 
is in England, where the generally expensive 
manner of living, and the prevalent desire to 
keep families in an ideally perfect state of 
physical comfort, produce an absorption in 
business which in all but the rarest instances 
leaves no margin for intellectual labor. 
There are, no doubt, some remarkable ex- 
amples of men earning a large income by a 
laborious profession, who have gained repu- 
tation in one of the sciences or in some 
branch of literature, but these are very ex- 
ceptional cases. A man who works at his 
profession as most Englishmen with large 
families have to work, can seldom enjoy that 
surplus of nervous energy which would be 
necessary to carry him far in literature or 
science. I remember meeting an English 
tradesman in the railway between Paris and 
the coast, who told me that he was obliged to 



314 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

visit France very frequently, yet could not 
speak French, which was a great deficiency 
and inconvenience to him. ' ' Why not learn ? " 
I then asked, and received the following an- 
swer: 

' ' I have to work at my business all day 
long, and often far into the night. When 
the day's work is over I generally feel very 
tired, and want rest ; but if I don't happen to 
feel quite so tired, then it is not work that I 
need, but recreation, of which I get very lit- 
tle. I never feel the courage to set to work 
at the French grammar, though it would be 
both pleasant and useful to me to know 
French ; indeed, I constantly feel the want of 
it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn 
from a phrase-book in the railway train, but 
to save time I always travel at night. Being 
a married man, I have to give my whole at- 
tention to my business." 

A solicitor with a large practice in London 
held nearly the same language. He worked 
at his office all day, and often brought home 
the most difficult work for the quiet of his 
own private study after the household had 
gone to bed. The little reading that he could 
indulge in was light reading. In reality the 
profession intruded even on his few hours of 
leisure, for he read many of the columns in 
the Times which relate to law or legislation, 
and these make at the end of a few years an 
amount of reading sufficient for the mastery 
of a foreign literature. This gentleman an- 
swered very accurately to M. Taine's descrip- 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 315 

tion of the typical Englishman, absorbed in 
business and the Times. 

In these cases it is likely that the effect of 
marriage was not inwardly felt as a devia- 
tion; but when culture has been fairly be- 
gun, and marriage hinders the pursuit of it, 
or makes it deviate from the chosen path, 
then there is often an inward consciousness 
of the fact, not without its bitterness. 

A remarkable article on ' ' Luxury, " in the 
second volume of the Cornhill Magazine, 
deals with this subject in a manner evidently 
suggested by serious reflection and experi- 
ence. The writer considers the effects of the 
pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it 
is now) on the higher moral and intellectual 
life. The comforts of a bachelor were not 
what the writer meant ; these are easily pro- 
cured, and seldom require the devotion of all 
the energies. The "comfort " which is really 
dangerous to intellectual growth is that of a 
family establishment, because it so easily be- 
comes the one absorbing object of existence. 
Men who began life with the feeling that they 
would willingly devote their powers to great 
purposes, like the noble examples of past 
times who labored and suffered for the intel- 
lectual advancement of their race, and had 
starvation for their reward, or in some cases 
even the prison and the stake — men who in 
their youth felt themselves to be heirs of a 
nobility of spirit like that of Bruno, of Swam- 
merdam, of Spinoza, have too often found 
themselves in the noon of life concentrating 



316 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

all the energies of body and soul on the ac- 
quisition of ugly millinery and uglier uphol- 
stery, and on spreading extravagant tables t<7 
feed uncultivated guests. 

"It is impossible, " says the writer of the 
article just alluded to, "it is impossible to 
say why men were made, but assuming that 
they were made for some purpose, of which 
the faculties which they possess afford evi- 
dence, it follows that they were intended to 
do many other things besides providing for 
their families and enjoying their society. 
They were .meant to know, to act, and to feel 
— to know everything which the mind is able 
to contemplate, to name, and to classify; to 
do everything which the will, prompted by 
the passions and guided by the conscience, 
can undertake; and, subject to the same 
guidance, to feel in its utmost vigor every 
emotion which the contemplation of the va- 
rious persons and objects which surround us 
can excite. This view of the objects of life 
affords an almost infinite scope for human 
activity in different directions; but it also 
shows that it is in the highest degree danger- 
ous to its beauty and its worth to allow any 
one side of life to become the object of idola- 
try ; and there are many reasons for thinking 
that domestic happiness is rapidly assuming 
that position in the minds of the more com- 
fortable classes of Englishmen. . . . It is a 
singular and affecting thing, to see how every 
manifestation of human energy bears witness 
to the shrewdness of the current maxim that 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 817 

a large income is a necessary of life. What- 
ever is done for money is done admirably 
well. Give a man a specific thing to make or 
to write, and pay him well for it, and you may 
with a little trouble secure an excellent arti- 
cle; but the ability which does these things 
so well, might have been and ought to have 
been trained to far higher things, which for 
the most part are left undone, because the 
clever workman thinks himself bound to 
earn what will keep himself, his wife, and his 
six or seven children, up to the established 
standard of comfort. What was at first a 
necessity, perhaps an unwelcome one, be- 
comes by degrees a habit and a pleasure, and 
men who might have done memorable and 
noble things, if they had learnt in time to 
consider the doing of such things an object 
worth living for, lose the power and the wish 
to live for other than fireside purposes." 

But this kind of intellectual deviation, you 
may answer, is not strictly the consequence 
of marriage, qua marriagq; it is one of the 
consequences of a degree of relative poverty, 
produced by the larger expenditure of mar- 
ried life, but which might be just as easily 
produced by a certain degree of money-pres- 
sure in the condition of a bachelor. Let me 
therefore point out a kind of deviation which 
may be as frequently observed in rich mar- 
riages as in poor ones. Suppose the case of a 
bachelor with a small but perfectly indepen- 
dent income amounting to some hundreds a 
year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, 



318 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and spends his time in study or with culti- 
vated friends of his own, choosing friends 
whose society is an encouragement and a 
help. Suppose that this man makes an ex- 
ceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich wom- 
an, you may safely predict, in this instance, 
intellectual deviations of a kind perilous to 
the highest culture. He will have new calls 
upon his time, his society will no longer be 
entirely of his own choosing, he will no long- 
er be able to devote himself with absolute 
singleness of purpose to studies from which 
his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he 
were to continue faithful to his old habits, 
and shut himself up every day in his library 
or laboratory, or set out on frequent scien- 
tific expeditions, his wife would either be a 
lady of quite extraordinary perfection of tem- 
per, or else entirely indifferent in her feelings 
towards him, if she did not regard his pur- 
suits with quickly -increasing jealousy. She 
would think, and justifiably think, that he 
ought to give more of his time to the enjoy- 
ment of her society, that he ought to be more 
by her side in the carriage and in the draw- 
ing-room, and if he loved her he would yield 
to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He 
would spend many hours of every day in a 
manner not profitable to his great pursuits, 
and many weeks of every year in visits to 
her friends. His position would be even less 
favorable to study in some respects than that 
of a professional man. It would be difficult 
for him, if an amateur artist, to give that un- 



WOMEN AJ\ T D MA1UUAGE. 319 

remitting attention to painting which the 
professional painter gives. He could not say, 
4 ' I do this for you and for our children ; "• he 
could only say, "I do it for my own pleas- 
ure," which is not so graceful an excuse. As 
a bachelor, he might work as professional 
people work, but his marriage would strongly 
accentuate the amateur character of his posi- 
tion. It is possible that if his labors had won 
great fame the lady might bear the separa- 
tion more easily, for ladies always take a no- 
ble pride in the celebrity of their husbands ; 
but the best and worthiest intellectual labor 
often brings no fame whatever, and notoriety 
is a mere accident of some departments of 
the intellectual life, and not its ultimate ob- 
ject. 

George Sand, in her admirable novel u Val- 
vedre," has depicted a situation of this kind 
with the most careful delicacy of touch. Val- 
vedre was a man of science, who attempted 
to continue the labors of his intellectual life 
after marriage had united him to a lady inca- 
pable of sharing them. The reader pities 
both, and sympathizes with both. It is hard, 
on the one hand, that a man endowed by na- 
ture with great talents for scientific work 
should not go on with a career already glori- 
ously begun; and yet, on the other hand, a 
woman who is so frequently abandoned for 
science may blamelessly feel some jealousy 
of science. 

Valvedre, in narrating the story of his 
unhappy wedded life, said that Alida wished 



320 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to 
accompany her, but that he felt in himself 
a more serious ambition. He had not aimed 
at fame, but he had thought it possible to be- 
come a useful servant, bringing his share of 
patient and courageous seekings to the edifice 
of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida 
would understand this. " 'There is time 
enough for everything, ' she said, still retain- 
ing him in the useless wandering life that she 
had chosen. ' Perhaps,' he answered, 'but 
on condition that I lose no more of it ; and it 
is not in this wandering life, cut to pieces by 
a thousand unforeseen interruptions, that I 
can make the hours yield their profit. ' 

k ''Ah! we come to the point!' exclaimed 
Alida impetuously. ' You wish to leave me, 
and to travel alone in impossible regions. ' 

" ■ No, I will work near you and abandon 
certain observations which it would be neces- 
sary to make at too great a distance, but you 
also will sacrifice something : we will not see 
so many idle people, we will settle somewhere 
for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, 
and if the place does not suit you, we will try 
another ; but from time to time you will per- 
mit me a phase of sedentary work.' 

" 'Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself 
alone ; you have lived enough for me. I un- 
derstand; your love is satiated and at an 
end.' 

" Nothing could conquer her conviction 
that study was her rival, and that love was 
only possible in idleness. 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 321 

" ' To love is everything,' she said ; ' and he 
who loves has not time to concern himself 
with anything else. "Whilst the husband is 
intoxicating himself with the marvels of 
science, the wife languishes and dies. It is 
the destiny which awaits me ; and since I am 
a burden to you, I should do better to die at 
once.' 

"A little later Valvedre ventured to hint 
something about work, hoping to conquer his 
wife's ennui, on which she proclaimed the 
hatred of work as a sacred right of her nature 
and position. 

4 "Nobody ever taught me to work,' she 
said, ' and I did not marry under a promise 
to begin again at the a, 6, c of things. What- 
ever I know I have learned by intuition, by 
reading without aim or method. I am a 
woman; my destiny is to love my husband 
and bring up children. It is very strange 
that my husband should be the person who 
counsels me to think of something better.' " 

I am far from suggesting that Madame 
Valvedre is an exact representative of her 
sex, but the sentiments which in her are ex- 
aggerated, and expressed with passionate 
plainness, are in much milder form very preva- 
lent sentiments indeed ; and Valvedre's great 
difficulty, how to get leave to prosecute his 
studies with the degree of devotion necessary 
to make them fruitful, is not at all an uncom- 
mon difficulty with intellectual men after 
marriage. The character of Madame Valve- 
dre. being passionate and excessive, led her 
21 



822 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

to an open expression of her feelings; but 
feelings of a like kind, though milder in de- 
gree, exist frequently below the surface, and 
may be detected by any vigilant observer of 
human nature. That such feelings are very 
natural it is impossible even for a savant to 
deny ; but whilst admitting the clear right of 
a woman to be preferred by a man to science 
when once he has married her, let me observe 
that the man might perhaps do wisely, before 
the knot is tied, to ascertain whether her in- 
tellectual dowry is rich enough to compensate 
him for the sacrifices she is likely to exact. 



LETTER VI. 

TO A SOLITARY STUDENT. 

Need of a near intellectual friendship in solitude— Persons 
who live independently of custom run a peculiar risk in 
marriage— Women by nature more subservient to custom 
than men are— Difficulty of conciliating solitude and mar- 
riage — De Senancour — The marriages of eccentrics — Their 
wives either protect them or attempt to reform them. 

Isolated as you are, by the very superior- 
ity of your culture, from the ignorant provin- 
cial world around you, I cannot but believe 
that marriage is essential to your intellectual 
health and welfare. If you married some 
cultivated woman, bred in the cultivated so- 
ciety of a great capital, that companionship 
would give you an independence of surround- 
ing influences which nothing else can give. 
You fancy that by shutting yourself up in a 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 328 

country house you are uninfluenced by the 
world around you. It is a great error. You 
know that you are isolated, that you are 
looked upon and probably ridiculed as an ec- 
centric, and this knowledge, which it is im- 
possible to banish from your mind, deprives 
your thinking of elasticity and grace. You 
urgently need the support of an intellectual 
friendship quite near to you, under your own 
roof. Bachelors in great cities feel this ne- 
cessity less. 

Still remember, that whoever has arranged 
his life independently of custom runs a pecul- 
iar risk in marriage. Women are by nature 
far more subservient to custom than we are, 
more than we can easily conceive. The dan- 
ger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is 
that a woman entering your house might enter 
it as the representative of that minutely-inter- 
fering authority which you continually ignore. 
And let us never forget that a perfect obedi- 
ence to custom requires great sacrifices of 
time and money that you might not be dis- 
posed to make, and which certainly would 
interfere with study. You value and enjoy 
your solitude, well knowing how great a thing 
it is to be master of all your hours. It is dif- 
ficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise 
and suitable selection of acquaintances, with 
the semi-publicity of marriage. Heads of 
families receive many persons in their houses 
whom they would never have invited, and 
from whose society they derive little pleasure 
and no profit. De Senancour had plans of 



324 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

studious retirement, and hoped that the 
" douce intimite " of marriage might be com- 
patible with these cherished projects. But 
marriage, he found, drew him into the circle 
of ordinary provincial life, and he always 
suffered from its influences. 

You are necessarily an eccentric. In the 
neighborhood where you live it is an eccen- 
tricity to study, for nobody but you studies 
anything. A man so situated is fortunate 
. when this feeling of eccentricity is alleviated, 
and unfortunate when it is increased. A 
wife would certainly do one or the other. 
Married to a very superior woman, able to 
understand the devotion to intellectual aims, 
you would be much relieved of the painful 
consciousness of eccentricity; but a woman 
of less capacity would intensify it. 

So far as we can observe the married life of 
others, it seems to me that I have met with 
instances of men, constituted and occupied 
very much as you are, who have found in 
marriage a strong protection against the ig- 
norant judgments of their neighbors, and an 
assurance of intellectual peace; whilst in 
other cases it has appeared rather as if their 
solitude were made more a cause of conscious 
suffering, as if the walls of their cabinets 
were pulled down for the boobies outside to 
stare at them and laugh at them. A woman 
will either take your side against the customs 
of the little world around, or she will take 
the side of custom against you. If she loves 
you deeply, and if there is some visible result 



WOMEN AND MAEBTAGM. 325 

of your labors in fame and money, she may 
possibly do the first, and then she will pro- 
tect your tranquillity better than a force of 
policemen, and give you a delightful sense of 
reconciliation with all humanity; but many 
of her most powerful instincts tend the other 
way. She has a natural sympathy with all 
the observances of custom, and you neglect 
them ; she is fitted for social life, which you 
are not. Unless you win her wholly to your 
side, she may undertake the enterprise of 
curing your eccentricities and adapting you 
to the ideal of her caste. This may be high- 
ly satisfactory to the operator, but it is full 
of inconveniences to the patient. 



LETTER VII. 

TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT 
DIFFICULT TO ASSOCIATE WITH PERSONS OF 
HER OWN SEX. 

Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation— The 
interest of it would be increased if women could be more 
freely initiated into great subjects— Small subjects inter- 
esting when seen in relation to central ideas— That ladies 
of superior faculty ought rather to elevate female society 
than withdraw from it— Women when displaced do not 
appear happy. 

What you confided to me in our last inter- 
esting conversation has given me material 
for reflection, and afforded a glimpse of a 
state of things which I have sometimes sus- 
pected without having data for any positive 



326 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

conclusion. The society of women is usually 
sought by men during hours of mental relax- 
ation, and we naturally find such a charm in 
their mere presence, especially when they 
are graceful or beautiful, that we are not 
very severe or even accurate judges of the 
abstract intellectual quality of their talk. 
But a woman cannot feel the indescribable 
charm which wins us so easily, and I have 
sometimes thought that a superior person 
of your sex might be aware of certain de- 
ficiencies in her sis tors which men very read- 
ily overlook. You tell me that you feel em- 
barrassed in the society of ladies, because 
they know so littla about the subjects which 
interest you, and. are astonished when you 
speak about anything really worth attention. 
On the other hand, you feel perfectly at ease 
with men of ability and culture, and most at 
your ease with -men of the best ability and 
the most eminent attainments. What you 
complain of chiefly in women seems to be 
their impatience of varieties of thought 
which are unfamiliar to them, and their con- 
stant preference for small topics. 

It has long been felt by men that if women 
could be more freely initiated into great sub- 
jects the interest of general conversation 
would be much increased. The difficulty ap- 
pears to lie in their instinctive habit of mak- 
ing all questions personal questions. The eti- 
quette of society makes it quite impossible 
for men to speak td ladies in the manner 
which would be intellectually most profitable 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 327 

to them. We may not teach because it is 
pedantic, and we may not contradict, because 
it is rude. Most of the great subjects are 
conventionally held to be closed, so that it is 
a sin against good taste to discuss them. In 
every house the ladies have a set of fixed 
convictions of some kind, which it is not po- 
lite in any man to appear to doubt. The con- 
sequence of these conventional rules is that 
women live in an atmosphere of acquiescence 
which makes them intolerant of anything like 
bold and original thinking on important sub- 
jects. But as the mind always requires free 
play of some kind, when all the great subjects 
are forbidden it will use its activity in play- 
ing about little ones. 

For my part I hardly think it desirable for 
any of us to be incessantly coping with great 
subjects, and the ladies are right in taking a 
lively interest in the small events around 
them. But even the small events would have 
a deeper interest if they were seen in their 
true relations to the great currents of Euro- 
pean thought and action. It is probably the 
ignorance of these relations which, more than 
the smallness of the topics themselves, makes 
feminine talk fatiguing to you. Very small 
things indeed have an interest when exhibit- 
ed in relation to larger, as men of science are 
continually demonstrating. I have been tak- 
ing note lately of the talk that goes on around 
me, and I find that when it is shallow and 
wearisome it is always because the facts men- 
tioned bear no reference to any central or 



328 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

governing idea, and do not illustrate anything. 
Conversation is interesting in proportion to 
the originality of the central ideas which 
serve as pivots, and the fitness of the little 
facts and observations which are contributed 
by the talkers. For instance, if people hap- 
pened to be talking about rats, and some one 
informed you that he had seen a rat last week, 
that would be quite uninteresting : but you 
would listen with greater attention if he said ; 
1 S The other night, as I was going up stairs 
very late, I followed a very fine rat who was 
going up stairs too, and he was not in the 
least hurried, but stopped after every two or 
three steps to have a look &t me and my can- 
dle. He was very prettily marked about the 
face and tail, so I concluded that he was not 
a common rat, but probably a lemming. Two 
nights afterwards I met him again, and this 
time he seemed almost to know me, for he 
quietly made room for me as I passed. Very 
likely he might be easily tamed." This is in- 
teresting, because, though the fact narrated 
is still trifling, it illustrates animal character. 
If you will kindly pardon an "improve- 
ment " of this subject, as a preacher would 
call it, I might add that an intellectual lady 
like yourself might, perhaps, do better to 
raise the tone of the feminine talk around 
her than to withdraw from it in weariness. 
There are always, in every circle, a few supe- 
rior persons who, either from natural diffi- 
dence, or because they are not very rich, or 
because they are too young, suffer themselves 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 329 

to be entirely overwhelmed by the established 
mediocrity around them. What they need 
is a leader, a deliverer. Is it not in your 
power to render services of this kind? Could 
you not select from the younger ladies whom 
you habitually meet, a few who, like yourself, 
feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what 
you describe as the current feminine conver- 
sation? There is often a painful shyness 
which prevents people of real ability from 
using it for the advantage of others, and this 
shyness is nowhere so common as in England, 
especially provincial England. It feels the 
want of a hardy example. A lady who 
talked really well would no doubt run some 
risk of being rather unpleasantly isolated at 
first, but surely, if she tried, she might ulti- 
mately find accomplices. You could do much, 
to begin with, by recommending high-toned 
literature, and gradually awakening an inter- 
est in what is truly worth attention. It 
seems lamentable that every cultivated wo- 
man should be forced out of the society of 
her own sex, and made to depend upon ours 
for conversation of that kind which is an ab- 
solute necessity to the intellectual. The truth 
is, that women so displaced never appear 
altogether happy. And culture costs so much 
downright hard work, that it ought not to be 
paid for by any suffering beyond those toils 
which are its fair and natural price. 



LETTER VIIL 

TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE. 

Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women— They do 
not hear truth — Men disguise their thoughts for women- 
Cream and curacoa— Probable permanence of the desire 
to please women — Most truth in cultivated society — Hopes 
from the increase of culture. 

I think that the greatest misfortune in the 
intellectual life of women is that they do not 
hear the truth from men. 

All men in cultivated society say to women 
as much as possible that which they may be 
supposed to wish to hear, and women are so 
much accustomed to this that they can 
scarcely hear without resentment an expres- 
sion of opinion which takes no account of their 
personal and private feeling. The considera- 
tion for the feelings of women gives an agree- 
able tone to society, but it is fatal to the sever- 
ity of truth. Observe a man of the world 
whose opinions are well known to you, — notice 
the little pause before he speaks to a lady. 
During that little pause he is turning over 
what he has to say, so as to present it in the 
manner that will please her best; and you 
may be sure that the integrity of truth will 
suffer in the process. If we compare what we 
know of the man with that which the lady 
hears from him, we perceive the immense dis- 
advantages of her position. He ascertains 



WOMEN AND MARRIAGE. 331 

what will please her, and that is w T hat he ad- 
ministers. He professes to take a deep interest 
in things which he does not care for in the 
least, and he passes lightly over subjects and 
events which he knows to be of the most mo- 
mentous importance to the world. The lady 
spends an hour more agreeably than if she 
heard opinions which would irritate, and prog- 
nostics which would alarm her, but she has 
missed an opportunity for culture, she has 
been confirmed in feminine illusions. If this 
happened only from time to time, the effect 
would not tell so much on the mental consti- 
tution; but it is incessant, it is continual, 
Men disguise their thoughts for women as if 
to venture into the feminine world were as 
dangerous as travelling in Arabia, or as if the 
thoughts themselves were criminal. 

There appeared two or three years ago in 
Punch a clever drawing which might have 
served as an illustration to this subject. A 
fashionable doctor was visiting a lady in Bel- 
gravia who complained that she suffered from 
debility. Cod-liver oil being repugnant to her 
taste, the agreeable doctor, wise in his gener- 
ation, blandly suggested as an effective sub- 
stitute a mixture of cream and curagoa. 
What that intelligent man did for his patient's 
physical constitution, all men of politeness do 
for the intellectual constitution of ladies. In- 
stead of administering the truth which would 
strengthen, though unpalatable, they admin- 
ister intellectual cream and curagoa. 

The primary cause of this tendency to* say 



332 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

what is most pleasing to women is likely to be 
as permanent as the distinction of sex itself. 
It springs directly from sexual feelings, it is 
hereditary and instinctive. Men will never 
talk to women with that rough frankness 
which they use between themselves. Conver- 
sation between the sexes will always be par- 
tially insincere. Still I think that the more 
women are respected, the more men will de- 
sire to be approved by them for what they are 
in reality, and the less they will care for ap- 
proval which is obtained by dissimulation. It 
may be observed already that, in the most in- 
tellectual society of great capitals, men are 
considerably more outspoken before women 
than they are in the provincial middle-classes. 
Where women have most culture, men are 
most open and sincere. Indeed, the highest 
culture has a direct tendency to command sin- 
cerity in others, both because it is tolerant of 
variety in opinion, and because it is so pene- 
trating that dissimulation is felt to be of no 
use. By the side of an uncultivated woman, 
a man feels that if he says anything different 
from what she has been accustomed to she 
will take offence, whilst if he says anything 
beyond the narrow range of her information 
he will make her cold and uncomfortable. 
The most honest of men, in such a position, 
finds it necessary to be very cautious, and can 
scarcely avoid a little insincerity. But with 
a woman of culture equal to his own, these 
causes for apprehension have no existence, 
and he can safely be more himself. 



WOMEN A XI) MAR1UAGE. 333 

These considerations lead me to hope that 
as culture becomes more general women will 
hear truth more frequently. Whenever this 
comes to pass, it will be, to them, an immense 
intellectual gain. 



LETTER IX 

TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL 
EDUCATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT IT WAS 
DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH 
HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF SOMEWHAT AU- 
THORITATIVE DISPOSITION, BUT UNEDUCATED. 

A sort of misunderstanding common in modern households- 
Intolerance of inaccuracy — A false position — A lady not 
easily intimidated— Difficulty of arguing when you have to 
teach— Instance about the American War— The best course 
in discussion with ladies — Women spoilt by non-contradic- 
tion — They make all questions personal — The strength of 
their feelings — Their indifference to matters of fact. 

I have been thinking a good deal, and seri- 
ously, since we last met, about the subject of 
our conversation, which though a painful one 
is not to be timidly avoided. The degree of 
unhappiness in your little household, which 
ought to be one of the pleasantest of house- 
holds, yet which, as you confided to me, is 
overshadowed by a continual misunderstand- 
ing, is, I fear, very common indeed at the 
present day. It is only by great forbearance, 
and great skill, that any household in which 
persons of very different degrees of culture 
have to live together on terms of equality, 



334 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

can be maintained in perfect peace ; and nei- 
ther the art nor the forbearance is naturally 
an attribute of youth. A man whose schol- 
arly attainments were equal to your own, 
and whose experience of men and women 
was wider, could no doubt offer you counsel 
both wise and practical, yet I can hardly say 
that I should like you better if you followed 
it. I cannot blame you for having the nat- 
ural characteristics of your years, an honest 
love of the best truth that you have attained 
to, an intolerance of inaccuracy on all sub- 
jects, a simple faith in the possibility of teach- 
ing others, even elderly ladies, when they 
happen to know less than yourself. All these 
characteristics are in themselves blameless; 
and yet in your case, and in thousands of 
other similar cases, they often bring clouds 
of storm and trial upon houses which, in a 
less rapidly progressive century than our own, 
might have been blessed with uninterrupted 
peace. The truth is, that you are in a false 
position relatively to your mother, and your 
mother is in a false position relatively to you. 
She expects deference, and deference is 
scarcely compatible with contradiction; cer- 
tainly, if there be contradiction at all, it must 
be very rare, very careful, and very delicate. 
You, on the other hand, although no doubt 
full of respect and affection for your mother 
in your heart, cannot hear her authoritatively 
enunciating anything that you know to be 
erroneous, without feeling irresistibly urged 
to set her right. She is rather a talkative 



WOMEN ANIJ MARBIAGE. 335 

lady ; she does not like to hear a conversation 
going forward without taking a part in it, and 
rather an important part, so that whatever 
subject is talked about in her presence, that 
subject she will talk about also. Even before 
specialists your mother has an independence 
of opinion, and a degree of faith in her own 
conclusions, which would be admirable if 
they were founded upon right reason and a 
eareful study of the subject. Medical men, 
*ind even lawyers, do not intimidate her ; she 
is convinced that she knows more about dis- 
ease than the physician, and more about legal 
business than an old attorney. In theology 
no parson can approach her ; but here a wom- 
an may consider herself on her own ground, 
as theology is the speciality of women. 

All this puts you out of patience, and it is 
intelligible that, for a young gentleman of in- 
tellectual habits and somewhat ardent tem- 
perament like yourself, it must be at times 
rather trying to have an Authority at hand 
ever ready to settle all questions in a decisive 
manner. To you I have no counsel to offer 
but that of unconditional submission, You 
have the weakness to enter into arguments 
when to sustain them you must assume the 
part of a teacher. In arguing with a person 
already well-informed upon the subject in 
dispute, you may politely refer to knowledge 
w^hich he already possesses, but when he does 
not possess the knowledge you cannot argue 
with him; you must first teach him, you 
must become didactic, and therefore odious. 



336 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

T remember a great scene which took place 
between you and your mother concerning the 
American War. It was brought on by a too 
precise answer of yours relatively to your 
friend B., who had emigrated to America. 
You mother asked to what part of America 
B. had emigrated, and you answered, u The 
Argentine Republic/' A shade of displeasure 
clouded your mother's countenance, because 
she did not know where the Argentine Repub- 
lic might be, and betrayed it by her manner. 
You imprudently added that it was in South 
America. " Yes, yes, I know very welV she 
answered; "there was a great battle there 
during the American War, It is well your 
friend was not there under Jefferson Davis." 
Now, permit me to observe, my estimable 
young friend, that this was what the French 
call a fine opportunity for holding your 
tongue, but your missed it. Fired with an 
enthusiasm for truth (always dangerous to 
the peace of families), you began to explain 
to the good lady that the Argentine Repub- 
lic, though in South America, was not one of 
the Southern States of the Union. This led 
to a scene of which I was the embarrassed 
and unwilling witness. Your mother vehe- 
mently affirmed that all the Southern States 
had been under Jefferson Davis, that she 
knew the fact perfectly, that it had always 
been known to every one during the war, and 
that, consequently, as the Argentine Repub 
lie was in South America, the ilrgentine Re* 
public had been under Jefferson Davis. Rap- 



Women and marriage. 337 

idly warming with this discussion, your 
mother " supposed that you would deny next 
that there had ever been such a thing as a 
war between the North and the South." 
Then you, in your turn, lost temper, and you 
fetched an atlas for the purpose of explaining 
that the southern division of the continent 
of America was not the southern half of the 
United States. You were landed, as people 
always are landed when they prosecute an 
argument with the ignorant, in the thankless 
office of the schoolmaster. You were actual- 
ly trying to give your mother a lesson in ge- 
ography! She was not grateful to you for 
your didactic attentions. She glanced at the 
book as people glance at an offered dish 
which they dislike. She does not understand 
maps; the representation of places in geo- 
graphical topography has never been quite 
clear to her. Your little geographical lecture 
irritated, but did not inform; it clouded the 
countenance, but did not illuminate the un- 
derstanding. The distinction between South 
America and the Southern States is not easy 
to the non-analytic mind under any circum- 
stances, but when amour propre is involved 
it becomes impossible. 

I believe that the best course in discussions 
of this kind with ladies is simply to say once 
what is true, for the acquittal of your own 
conscience, but after that to remain silent on 
that topic, leaving the last word to the lady, 
who will probably simply re-affirm what she 
has already said. For example, in the dis- 



338 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

cussion about the Argentine Kepublic, your 
proper course would have been to say first, 
firmly, that the territory in question was not 
a part of the seceded States and had never 
been in the Union, with a brief and decided 
geographical explanation. Your mother 
would not have been convinced by this, and 
would probably have had the last word, but 
the matter would have ended there. Another 
friend of mine, who is in a position very like 
your own, goes a step farther, and is deter- 
mined to agree with his mother-in-law in 
everything. He always assents to her prop- 
ositions. She is a Frenchwoman, and has 
been accustomed to use Algerie and Afrique 
as Convertible terms. Somebody spoke of the 
Cape of Good Hope as being in Africa. 
■ 4 Then it belongs to France, as Africa belongs 
to France. " ' ' Oui, chere mere, " he answered, 
in his usual formula ; " vous avez raison. " 

He alluded to this afterwards when we were 
alone together. * ' I was foolish enough some 
years since, " he said, "to argue with my belle 
mere and try to teach her little things from, 
time to time, but it kept her in a state of 
chronic ill-humor and led to no good; it 
spoiled her temper, and it did not improve 
her mind. But since I have adopted the plan 
of perpetual assent we get on charmingly. 
Whatever she affirms I assent to at once, and 
all is well. My friends are in the secret, and 
so no contradictory truth disturbs our amia 
ble tranquillity." 

A system of this kind spoils women com- 



WOMEN AND MAURI AGE. 339 

pletely, and makes the least contradiction in- 
tolerable to them. It is better that they 
should at least have the opportunity of hear- 
ing truth, though no attempt need be made 
to force it upon them. The position of ladies 
of the generation which preceded ours is in 
many respects a very trying one, and we do 
not always adequately realize it. A lady like 
your mother, who never really went through 
any intellectual discipline, who has no no- 
tion of intellectual accuracy in anything, is 
compelled by the irresistible feminine instinct 
to engage her strongest feelings in every dis- 
cussion that arises. A woman can rarely de- 
tach her mind from questions of persons to 
apply it to questions of fact. She does not 
think simply, "Is that true of such a thing? " 
but she thinks, " Does he love me or respect 
me?" The facts about the Argentine Eepub- 
lic and the American War were probably 
quite indifferent to your mother; but your 
opposition to what she had asserted seemed 
to her a failure in affection, and your attempt 
to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling 
in women is far from being wholly egoistic. 
They refer everything to persons, but not nec- 
essarily to their own persons. Whatever you 
affirm as a fact, they find means of interpret- 
ing as loyalty or disloyalty to some person 
whom they either venerate or love, to the 
head of religion, or of the State, or of the 
family. Hence it is always dangerous to en- 
ter upon intellectual discussion of any kind 
with women, for you are almost certain to of- 



340 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

fend them by setting aside the sentiments of 
veneration, affection, love, which they have 
in great strength, in order to reach accuracy 
in matters of fact, which they neither have 
nor care for, 



PART VIII. 

ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 



LETTER I. 

TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN. 

A contrast— A poor student— His sad fate— Class-sentiment— 
Tyeho Brahe— Robert Burns— Shelley's opinion of Byron 
—Charles Dickens-Shopkeepers in English literature — 
Pride of aristocratic ignorance — Pursuits tabooed by the 
spirit of caste— Affected preferences in intellectual pur- 
suits — Studies that add to gentility — Sincerity of interest 
needed for genuine culture — The exclusiveness of schol- 
arly caste — Its bad influence on outsiders — Feeling of 
Burns toward scholars — Sureness of class-instinct — Un- 
foreseen effect of railways — Return to nomadic life and 
the chase— Advantages and possibilities to life in the 
higher classes. 

It is one of the privileges of authorship to 
have correspondents in the most widely dif- 
ferent positions, and by means of their frank 
and friendly letters (usually much more frank 
than any oral communication) to gain a singu- 
larly accurate insight into the working of 
circumstances on the human intellect and 
character. The same post that brought me 
your last letter brought news about another 
of my friends whose lot has been a striking- 
contrast to your own.* 

* I think it right fcr inform the reader that there is no fiction 
in this letter. 



312 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Lot me dwell upon this contrast for a few 
minutes. All the sunshine appears to have 
been on your side, and all the shadow on his. 
Born of highly cultivated parents, in the 
highest rank in England under royalty, you 
have lived from the beginning amongst the 
most efficient aids to culture, and Nature has 
iso endowed you that, instead of becoming in- 
different to these things from familiarity, 
you have learned to value them more and 
more in every successive year. The plainest 
statement of your advantages would sound 
like an extract from one of Disraeli's 
novels. Your father's principal castle is sit- 
uated amongst the finest scenery in Britain, 
and his palace in London is tilled with master- 
pieces of art. Wherever you have lived you 
have been surrounded by good literature and 
cultivated friends. Your health is steadily 
robust, you can travel wherever you choose, 
and all the benefits of all the capitals o\' 
Europe belong to you as much as to their own 
citizens. In all these gifts and opportunities 
there is but one evil— the bewilderment of 
their multiplicity. 

My other correspondent has been less for- 
tunately situated. " I began school," he says, 
"when six yeafs old, was taken from it at 
eleven and sent to the mines to earn a little 
towards my own support. I continued there 
till fourteen, when through an unlucky inci- 
dent I was made a hopeless cripple. At that 
day I was earning the noble sum oi' eightpence 
per day, quite as much as any boy of that age 



ARISTOCRACY AM) DEMOCRACY. 343 

got in the lead mines. I suffered much for 
two years; after that, became much easier, 
but my legs were quite useless, and have con- 
tinued so up to the present time. The right 
thigh-bone is decayed, has not got worse these 
nine years ; therefore I conclude that I may 
live — say another thirty years. I should like, 
at all events, for life is sweet even at this 
cost ; not but what I could die quietly enough, 
I dare say. I have not been idle these 
years. ..." 

(Here permit me to introduce a parenthesis. 
He certainly had not been idle. He had edu- 
cated himself up to such a point that he could 
really appreciate both literature and art, and 
had attained some genuine skill in both. His 
letters to me were the letters of a cultivated 
gentleman, and he used invariably to insert 
little pen-sketches, which were done with a 
light and refined hand.) 

" I can do anything almost in bed — except 
getting up. I am now twenty-two years old. 
My father was a miner, but is now unable to 
work. I have only one brother working, and 
we are about a dozen of us; consequently we 
are not in the most flourishing circumstances, 
but a friend has put it in my power to learn 
to etch. I have got the tools and your hand- 
book on the subject.'' 

These extracts are from his first letter. 
Afterwards he wrote me others which made 
me feel awed and humbled by the manly 
cheerfulness with which he bore a lot so 
dreary, and by the firmness of resolution he 



344 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

showed in his pursuits. He could not quit 
his bed, but that was not the worst ; he could 
not even sit up in bed, and yet he contrived, 
I know not how, both to write and draw and 
etch on copper, managing the plaguy chemi- 
cals, and even printing his own proofs. His 
bed was on wheels, on a sort of light iron car- 
riage, and he saw nature out-of-doors. All 
the gladness of physical activity was com- 
pletely blotted out of his existence, and in 
that respect his prospects were without hope. 
And still he said that "life was sweet." O 
marvel of all marvels, how could that life be 
sweet ! 

Aided by a beautiful patience and resigna- 
tion the lamp of the mind burned with a 
steady brightness, fed by his daily studies. 
In the winters, however, the diseased limb 
gave him prolonged agony, and in the au- 
tumn of 1872, to avoid the months of torture 
that lay before him, he had himself put in 
fhe railway and sent off, in his bed, to Edin- 
burgh, sleeping in a waiting-room on the 
way. There was no one to attend him, but 
he trusted, not vainly, to the humanity of 
strangers. Just about the same time your 
lordship went northwards also, with many 
friends, to enjoy the noble scenery, and the 
excitement of noble sport. My poor cripple 
got to Edinburgh, got a glimpse of Scott's 
monument and the Athenian pillars, and sub- 
mitted himself to the surgeons. They ren- 
dered him the best of services, for they ended 
his pains forever. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 345 

So I am to get no more of those wonderful- 
ly brave and cheerful letters that were writ- 
ten from the little bed on wheels. I miss 
them for the lessons they quite unconsciously 
conveyed. He fancied that he was the learn- 
er, poor lad! and I the teacher, whereas it 
was altogether the other way. He made me 
feel what a blessing it is, even from the 
purely intellectual point of view, to be able 
to get out of bed after the night's rest, and 
go from one room to another. He made me 
understand the value of every liberty and 
every power whilst at the same time he 
taught me to bear more patiently every limit, 
and inconvenience, and restriction. 

In comparing his letters with yours I have 
been struck by one reflection predominantly, 
which is, the entire absence of class-senti- 
ment in both of you. Nobody, not in the se- 
cret, could guess that one set of letters came 
from a palace and the other set from a poor 
miner's cottage ; and even to me, who do not 
see the habitations except by an effort of the 
memory or imagination, there is nothing to 
recall the immensity of the social distance 
that separated my two friendly and welcome 
correspondents. It is clear, of course, that 
one of them had enjoyed greater advantages 
than the other, but neither wrote from the 
point of view which marks his caste or class. 
It was my habit to write to you, and to him, 
exactly in the same tone, yet this was not felt 
to be unsuitable by either. 

Is it not that the love and pursuit of cult- 



346 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ure lead each of us out of his class, and 
that class- views of any kind, whether of the 
aristocracy, or of the middle class, or of the 
people, inevitably narrow the mind and hin- 
der it from receiving pure truth? Have you 
ever known any person who lived habitually 
in the notions of a caste, high or low, with- 
out incapacitating himself in a greater or less 
degree for breadth and delicacy of percep- 
tion? It seems to me that the largest and 
best minds, although they have been born and 
nurtured in this caste or that, and may con- 
tinue to conform externally to its customs, 
always emancipate themselves from it intel- 
lectually, and arrive at a sort of neutral re- 
gion, where the light is colorless, and clear, 
and equal, like plain daylight out of doors. 
So soon as we attain the f orgetfulness of self, 
and become absorbed in our pursuits for their 
own sakes, the feeling of caste drops off from 
us. It was not a mark of culture in Tycho 
Brahe, but rather of the imperfections of his 
culture, that he felt so strongly the difficulty 
of conciliating scientific pursuits with the 
obligations of noble birth, and began his pub- 
lic discourses on astronomy by telling his 
audience that the work was ill-suited to his 
social position — hesitating, too, even about 
authorship from a dread of social degrada- 
tion. And to take an instance from the op- 
posite extreme of human society, Eobert 
Burns betrayed the same imperfection of 
culture in his dedication to the members of 
the Caledonian Hunt, when he spoke of his 



ABISTOCBACY AND DEMOCRACY. Ml 

1 'honest rusticity," and told the gentlefolks 
that he was u bred to the plough, and inde- 
pendent." Both of these men had been un- 
favorably situated for the highest culture, 
the one by the ignorance of his epoch the 
other by the ignorance of his class; hence 
this uneasiness about themselves and their 
social position. Shelley said of Byron, " The 
canker of aristocracy wants to be cut out ; " 
and he did not say this from the point of 
view of a democrat, for Shelley was not pre- 
cisely a democrat, but from the broadly hu- 
man point of view, on which the finest intel- 
lects like to take their stand, Shelley per- 
ceived that Byron's aristocracy narrowed 
him, and made his sympathies less catholic 
than they might have been, nor can there be 
any doubt of the accuracy of this estimate of 
Shelley's; if a doubt existed it would be re- 
moved by Byron's alternative for a poet, 
"solitude, or high life." Another man of 
genius, wiiose loss we have recently deplored, 
was narrowed by his antipathy to the aristo- 
cratic spirit, though it is necessary to add, 
in justice, that it did not prevent him from 
valuing the friendship of noblemen whom he 
esteemed. The works of Charles Dickens 
would have been more accurate as pictures of 
English life, certainly more comprehensively 
accurate, if he could have felt for the aristoc- 
racy that hearty and loving sympathy which 
he felt for the middle classes and the people. 
But the narrowness of Dickens is more excus- 
able than that of Byron, because a kindly 



348 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

heart more easily enters into the feelings of 
those whom it can often pity than of those 
who appear to be lifted above pity (though 
this is nothing but an appearance) and also 
because it is the habit of aristocracies to repel 
such sympathy by their manners, which the 
poor do not. 

! I have often thought that a sign of aristo- 
cratic narrowness in many English authors, 
including some of the most popular authors 
of the day, is the way they speak of shop- 
keepers. This may be due to simple igno- 
rance ; but if so, it is ignorance that might be 
easily avoided. Happily for our convenience 
there are a great many shopkeepers in Eng- 
land, so that there is no lack of the materials 
for study; but our novelists appear to con- 
sider this important class of Englishmen as 
unworthy of any patient and serious portrait- 
ure. You may remember Mr. Anthony Trol- 
lope's " Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Rob- 
inson," which appeared in the Comhill 
Magazine, under Thackeray's editorship. 
That was an extreme instance of the way the 
class is treated in our literature : and then in 
poetry we have some disdainful verses of Mr. 
Tennyson's. It may be presumed that there 
is material for grave and respectful treat- 
ment of this extensive class, but our poets 
and novelists do not seem to have discovered, 
or sought to discover, the secret of that treat- 
ment. The intensity of the prejudices of 
caste prevents them from seeing any possibil- 
ity of true gentlemanhood in a draper or a 



ARISTOCRACY AN I) DEMOCRACY. 349 

grocer, and blinds them to the aesthetic 
beauty or grandeur which may be as per- 
fectly compatible with what is disdainful- 
ly called u counter- jumping " as it is admit- 
ted to be with the jumping of five-barred 
gates. 

The same caste prejudices have often kept 
the mass of the upper classes in ignorance 
of most valuable and important branches of 
knowledge. The poor have been ignorant, 
yet never proud of their ignorance; the ig- 
norance that men are proud of belongs to 
caste always, not always to what we should 
call an aristocratic caste, but to the caste- 
feeling in one class or another. The pride of 
the feudal baron in being totally illiterate 
amounted to self- exclusion from all intellect- 
ual culture, and we may still find living in- 
stances of partial self -exclusion from culture, 
of which pride is the only motive. There are 
people who pass their time in what are con- 
sidered amusements (that do not amuse), be- 
cause it seems to them a more gentlemanly 
sort of life than the devotion to some great 
and worthy pursuit which would have given 
the keenest zest and relish to their whole ex- 
istence (besides making them useful members 
of society, which they are not), but which 
happens to be tabooed for them by the preju- 
dices of their caste. There are many studies, 
in themselves noble and useful, that a man of 
good family cannot follow with the earnest- 
ness and the sacrifice of time necessary to 
success in them, without incurring the disap- 



350 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

probation of his friends. If this disapproba- 
tion were visited on the breaker of caste-reg- 
ulations because he neglected some other 
culture, there would still be something reason- 
able in it ; but this is not the case. The caste- 
regulation forbids the most honorable and 
instructive labor when it does not forbid the 
most unprofitable idleness, the most utter 
throwing away of valuable time and faculty. 
Tycho Brahe feared to lose caste in becoming 
the most illustrious astronomer of his time ; 
but he would have had no such apprehension, 
nor any ground for such apprehension, if 
instead of being impelled to noble work by a 
high intellectual instinct, he had been im- 
pelled by meaner passions to unlimited self- 
indulgence. Even, in our own day these 
prejudices are still strong enough, or have 
been until very lately, to keep our upper 
classes in great darkness about natural 
knowledge of all kinds, and about its applica- 
tion to the arts of life. How few gentlemen 
have been taught to draw accurately, and 
how few are accurately acquainted with the 
great practical inventions of the age! The 
caste-sentiment does not, in these days, keep 
them ignorant of literature, but it keeps them 
ignorant of things. A friend who had a 
strong constructive and experimental turn, 
told me that, as a rule, he found gentlemen 
less capable of entering into his ideas than 
common joiners and blacksmiths, because 
these humble workmen, from their habit' of 
dealing with matter, had acquired some ex- 



ABISTOCBACY AND DEMOCRACY. 351 

perience of its nature. For my own part, I 
have often been amazed by the difficulty of 
making something clear to a classically edu- 
cated gentleman which any intelligent me- 
chanic would have seen to the bottom, and all 
round, after five or six minutes of explana- 
tion. There is a certain French nobleman 
whose ignorance I have frequent opportuni- 
ties of fathoming, always with fresh astonish- 
ment at the depths of it, and I declare that he 
knows no more about the properties of stone, 
and timber, and metal, than if he were a 
cherub in the clouds of heaven ! 

But there is something in caste-sentiment 
even more prejudicial to culture than igno- 
rance itself, and that is the affectation of 
strong preferences for certain branches of 
knowledge in which people are not seriously 
interested. There is nothing which people 
will not pretend to like, if a liking for it is 
supposed to be one of the marks and indica^ 
tions of gentility. There has been an im> 
mense amount of this kind of affectation in 
regard to classical scholarship, and we know 
for a certainty that it is affectation whenever 
people are loud in their praise of classical 
authors whom they never take the trouble 
to read. It may have happened to you, as 
it has happened to me from time to time, 
to hear men affirm the absolute necessity of 
classical reading to distinction of thought 
and manner, and yet to be aware at the same 
time, from close observation of their habits, 
that those very men entirely neglected the 



352 TEE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

sources of that culture in which they pro- 
fessed such earnest faith. The explanation 
is, that as classical accomplishments are con- 
sidered to be one of the evidences of gentility, 
whoever speaks loudly in their favor affirms 
that he has the tastes and preferences of a 
gentleman. It is like professing the fashion- 
able religion, or belonging to an aristocratic 
shade of opinion in politics. I have not a 
doubt that all affectations of this kind are in- 
jurious to genuine culture, for genuine cult- 
ure requires sincerity of interest before 
everything, and the fashionable affectations, 
so far from attracting sincere men to the de- 
partments of learning which happen to be a 
la mode, positively drive them away, just as 
many have become Nonconformists because 
the established religion was considered neces- 
sary to gentility, who might have remained 
contented with its ordinances as a simple dis- 
cipline for their souls. 

I dislike the interference of genteel notions 
in our studies for another reason. They de- 
prive such culture as we may get from them, 
of one of the most precious results of culture, 
the enlargement of our sympathy for others. 
If we encourage ourselves in the pride of 
scholarly caste, so far as to imagine that we 
who have made Latin verses are above com- 
parison with all who have never exercised 
their ingenuity in that particular way, we are 
not likely to give due and serious attention to 
the ideas of people whom we are pleased to 
consider uneducated ; and yet it may happen 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 353 

that these people are sometimes our intellect- 
ual superiors, and that their ideas concern us 
very closely. But this is only half the evil. 
The consciousness of our contempt embitters 
the feelings of men in other castes, and pre- 
vents them from accepting our guidance 
when it might be of the greatest practical 
utility to them. I may mention Eobert 
Burns as an instance of a man of genius who 
would have been happier and more fortu- 
nate if he had felt no barrier of separation 
between himself and the culture of his time. 
His poetry is as good rustic poetry as the best 
that has come down to us from antiquity, and 
instead of feeling towards the poets of times 
past the kind of soreness which a parvenu 
feels towards families of ancient descent, he 
ought rather to have rejoiced in the con- 
sciousness that he was their true and legiti- 
mate successor, as the clergy of an authentic 
Church feel themselves to be successors and 
representatives of saints and apostles who are 
gathered to their everlasting rest. But poor 
Burns knew that in an age when what is 
called scholarship gave all who had acquired 
it a right to look down upon poets who had 
only genius as the illegitimate offspring of 
nature, his position had not that solidity 
which belonged to the scholarly caste, and the 
result was a perpetual uneasiness which broke 
out in frequent defiance. 

" There's ither poets, much your betters, 
Far seen in Greek, deep men o 7 letters, 
Hae thought they had ensur'd their debtors 

23 



354 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

A' future ages ; 
Noio moths deform in shapeless tatters, 
Their unknoivn pages." 

And again, in another poem — 

" A set o 1 dull, conceited hashes 
Confuse their brains in college classes! 
They gang in stirks, and come out asses, 

Plain truth to speak; 
An 1 syne they think to climb Parnassus 
By dint o' Greek!" 

It was the influence of caste that made 
Burns write in this way, and how unjust it 
was every modern reader knows. The great 
majority of poets have been well-educated 
men, and instead of ganging into college like 
stirks and coming out like asses, they have, 
as a rule, improved their poetic faculty by an 
acquaintance with the mastqrpieces of their 
art. Yet Burns is not to be blamed for this in- 
justice ; he sneered at Greek because Greek 
was the mark of a disdainful and exclusive 
caste, but he never sneered at French or Ital- 
ian. He had no soreness against culture for 
its own sake ; it was the pride of caste that 
galled him. 

How surely the wonderful class-instinct 
guided the aristocracy to the kind of learning 
likely to be the most effectual barrier against 
fellowship with the mercantile classes and the 
people ! The uselessness of Greek in industry 
and commerce was a guarantee that those 
who had to earn their bread would never find 
time to master it, and even the strange diffi- 
cult look of the alphabet (though in reality 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 355 

the alphabet was a gate of gossamer), ensured 
a degree of awful veneration for those initiat- 
ed into its mysteries. Then the habit our 
forefathers had of quoting Latin and Greek 
to keep the ignorant in their places, was a 
strong defensive weapon of their caste, and 
they used it without scruple. Every year re- 
moves this passion for exclusiveness farther 
and farther into the past ; every year makes 
learning of every kind less available as the 
armor of a class, and less to be relied upon as 
a means of social advancement and considera- 
tion. Indeed, we have already reached a con- 
dition which is drawing back many members 
of the aristocracy to a state of feeling about 
intellectual culture resembling that of their 
forefathers in the middle ages. The old bar- 
barian feeling has revived of late, a feeling 
which (if it were self-conscious enough) might 
find expression in some such words as 
these : — 

"It is not by learning and genius that we 
can hold the highest place, but by the daz- 
zling exhibition of external splendor in those 
costly pleasures which are the plainest evi- 
dence of our power. Let us have beautiful 
equipages on the land, beautiful yachts upon 
the sea; let our recreations be public and 
expensive, that the people may not easily 
lose sight of us, and may know that there is 
a gulf of difference between our life and 
theirs. Why should we toil at books that 
the poorest students read, we who have 
lordly pastimes for every month in the year? 



356 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

To be able to revel immensely in pleasures 
which those below us taste rarely or not at all, 
this is the best evidence of our superiority. 
So let us take them magnificently, like Eng- 
lish princes and lords." 

Even the invention of railways has pro- 
duced the unforeseen result of a return in 
the direction of barbarism. If there is one 
thing which distinguishes civilization it is 
fixity of residence ; and it is essential to the 
tranquil following of serious intellectual pur- 
poses that the student should remain for 
many months of the year in his own library 
or laboratory, surrounded by all his imple- 
ments of culture. But there are people of the 
highest rank in the England of to-day whose 
existence is as much nomadic as that of Red 
Indians in the reserved territories of North 
America. You cannot ascertain their where- 
abouts without consulting the most recent 
newspaper. Their life may be quite accur- 
ately described as a return, on a scale of un- 
precedented splendor and comfort, to the life 
of tribes in that stage of human development 
which is known as the period of the chase. 
They migrate from one hunting-ground to 
another as the diminution of the game impels 
them. Their residences, vast and substantial 
as they are, serve only as tents and wigwams. 
The existence of a monk in the cloister, of a 
prisoner in a fortress, is more favorable to the 
intellect than theirs. 

And yet notwithstanding these re-appear- 
ances of the savage nature at the very sum- 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 357 

mit of modern civilization, the life of a great 
English nobleman of to-day commands so 
much of what the intellectual know to be 
truly desirable, that it seems as if only a little 
firmness of resolution were needed to make 
all advantages his own. Surrounded by 
every aid, and having all gates open, he sees 
the paths of knowledge converging towards 
him like railways to some rich central city. 
He has but to choose his route, and travel 
along it with the least possible hindrance 
from every kind of friction, in the society of 
the best companions, and served by the most 
perfectly trained attendants. Might not our 
lords be like those brilliant peers who shone 
iike intellectual stars around the throne of 
Elizabeth, and our ladies like that great lady 
of whom said a learned Italian, ' ' che non vi 
aveva altra dama al mondo che la pareggiasse 
nella cognizione delle arti e nella notizia delle 
scienze e delle lingue," wherefore he called 
her boldly, in the enthusiasm of his admira- 
tion, " grande anfttrite, Diana nume delta 
terra ! " 



358 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

LETTER II. 

TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT, 

The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy— The desire to 
draw a line — Substitution of external limitations for real- 
ities — The high life of nature — Value of gentlemen in a 
State— Odiousness of the narrow class-spirit— Julian Fane 
—Perfect knighthood— Democracies intolerant of dignity 
— Tendency of democracies to fix one uniform type of 
manners— That type not a high one— A descriptive anec- 
dote — Knowledge and taste reveal themselves in man- 
ners — Dr. Arnold on the absence of gentlemen in France 
and Italy — Absence of a class with traditional good man- 
ners — Language denied by the vulgarity of popular taste 
— Influence of aristocratic opinion limited, that of demo- 
cratic opinion universal— Want of elevation in the French 
bourgeoisie— Spirit of the provincial democracy— Spirit of 
the Parisian democracy— Sentiments and acts of the Com- 
munards—Romantic feeling towards the past— Hopes for 
liberal culture in the democratic idea — Aristocracies think 
too much of persons and positions— That we ought to for- 
get persons and apply our minds to things, and phenom- 
ena, and ideas. 

All you say against the narrowness of the 
aristocratic spirit is true and to the point ; but 
I think that you and your party are apt to 
confound together two states of feeling which 
are essentially distinct from each other. 
There is an illiberal spirit of aristocracy, and 
there is also a liberal one. The illiberal spirit 
does not desire to improve itself, having a full 
and firm belief in its own absolute perfection ; 
its sole anxiety is to exclude others, to draw 
a circular line, the smaller the better, pro- 
vided always that it gets inside and can keep 
the millions out. We see this spirit, not only 
in reference to birth, but in even fuller activ- 



r ARISTOCBACY AND DEMOCRACY. 351) 

ity with regard to education and employment 
— in the preference for certain schools and 
colleges, for class reasons, without regard to 
the quality of the teaching — in the contempt 
for all professions but two or three, without 
regard to the inherent baseness or nobility of 
the work that has to be done in them : so that 
the question asked by persons of this temper 
is not whether a man has been well trained 
in his youth, but if he has been to Eton and 
Oxford ; not whether he is honorably laborious 
in his manhood, but whether he belongs to the 
Bar, or the Army, or the Church. This spirit 
is evil in its influence, because it substitutes 
external limitations for the realities of the in- 
tellect and the soul, and makes those realities 
themselves of no account wherever its tradi- 
tions prevail. This spirit cares nothing for 
culture, nothing for excellence, nothing for 
the superiorities that make men truly great ; 
all it cares for is to have reserved seats in the 
great assemblage of the world. Whatever 
you do, in fairness and honesty, against this 
evil and inhuman spirit of aristocracy, the 
best minds of this age approve ; but there is 
another spirit of aristocracy which does not 
always receive the fairest treatment at your 
hands, and which ought to be resolutely de- 
fended against you. 

There is really, in nature, such a thing as 
high life. There is really, in nature, a differ- 
ence between the life of a gentleman who has 
culture, and fine bodily health, and indepen- 
dence, and the life of a Sheffield dry-grinder 



360 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

« 

who cannot have any one of these three 
things. It is a good and not a bad sign of the 
state of popular intelligence when the people 
does not wilfully shut its eyes to the differ- 
ences of condition amongst men, and when 
those who have the opportunity of leading 
what is truly the high life accept its disci- 
pline joyfully and have a just pride in keep- 
ing themselves up to their ideal. A life of 
health, of sound morality, of disinterested in- 
tellectual activity, of freedom from petty 
cares, is higher than a life of disease, and 
vice, and stupidity, and sordid anxiety. I 
maintain that it is right and wise in a nation 
to set before itself the highest attainable ideal 
of human life as the existence of the complete 
gentleman, and that an envious democracy, 
instead of rendering a service to itself, does 
exactly the contrary when it cannot endure 
and will not tolerate the presence of high- 
spirited gentlemen in the State. There are 
things in this world that it is right to hate, 
that we are the better for hating with all our 
hearts; and one of the things that I hate 
most, and with most reason, is the narrow 
class-spirit when it sets itself against the great 
interests of mankind. It is odious in the nar- 
row-minded, pompous, selfish, pitiless aristo- 
crat who thinks that the sons of the people 
were made by Almighty God to be his lack- 
eys and their daughters to be his mistresses ; 
it is odious also, to the full as odious, in the 
narrow-minded, envious democrat who can- 
not bear to see any elegance of living, or 



Aristocracy and democracy, m 

grace of manner, or culture of mind above 
the range of his own capacity or his own 
purse. 

Let me recommend to your consideration 
the following words, written by one young 
nobleman about another young nobleman, 
and reminding us, as we much need to be re- 
minded, that life may be not only honest 
and vigorous, but also noble and beautiful. 
Robert Lytton says of Julian Fane — 

"He was, I think, the most graceful and 
accomplished gentleman of the generation he 
adorned, and by this generation, at least, ap- 
propriate place should be reserved for the 
memory of a man in whose character the most 
universal sympathy with all the intellectual 
culture of his age was united to a refinement 
of social form, and a perfection of personal 
grace, which, in spite of all its intellectual cult- 
ure, the age is sadly in want of. There is an 
artistry of life as well as of literature, and the 
perfect knighthood of Sidney is no less pre- 
cious to the world than the genius of Spenser." 

It is just this u perfect knighthood " that an 
envious democracy sneers at and puts down. 
I do not say that all democracies are necessa- 
rily envious, but they often are so, especially 
when they first assert themselves, and whilst 
in that temper they are very willing to ostra- 
cize gentlemen, or compel them to adopt bad 
manners. I have some hopes that the democ- 
racies of the future maybe taught by authors 
and artists to appreciate natural gentleman- 
hood ; but so far as we know them hitherto 



302 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

they seem intolerant of dignity, and disposed 
to attribute it (very unjustly) to individual 
self-conceit. The personages most popular in 
democratic countries are often remarkably 
deficient in dignity, and liked the better for 
the want of it, whilst if on the positive side 
they can display occasional coarseness they 
become more popular still. Then I should 
say, that although democratic feeling raises 
the lower classes and increases their self-re- 
spect, which is indeed one of the greatest im- 
aginable benefits to a nation, it has a tendency 
to fix one uniform type of behavior and of 
thought as the sole type in conformity with 
what is accepted for "common sense," and 
that type can scarcely, in the nature of things, 
be a very elevated one. I have been much 
struck, in France, by the prevalence of what 
may be not inaccurately defined as the com- 
mercial traveller type, even in classes where 
you would scarcely expect to meet with it. 
One little descriptive anecdote will illustrate 
what I mean. Having been invited to a stag- 
hunt in the Cote d'Or, I sat down to dejeuner 
with the sportsmen in a good country-house 
or chateau (it was an old place with four 
towers), and in the midst of the meal in came 
a man smoking a cigar. After a bow to the 
ladies he declined to eat anything, and took a 
chair a little apart, but just opposite me. He 
resumed his hat and went on smoking with a 
sans-gene that rather surprised me under the 
circumstances. He put one arm on the side- 
board : the hand hung down, and I perceived 






ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 3G3 

that it was dirty (so was the shirt), and that 
the nails had edges of ebony. On his chin 
there was a black stubble of two days' growth. 
He talked very loudly, and his dress and man- 
ners were exactly those of a bagman just ar- 
rived at his inn. Who and what could the 
man be? I learned afterwards that he had 
begun life as a distinguished pupiJ of the Ecole 
1 Polytechnique, that since then he had distin- 
guished himself as an officer of artillery and 
had won the Legion of Honor on the field of 
battle, that he belonged to one of the princi- 
pal families in the neighborhood, and had 
nearly 2000Z. a year from landed property. 

Now, it may be a good thing for the roughs 
at the bottom of the social scale to level up to 
the bagman-ideal, but it does seem rather a 
pity (does it not?) that a born gentleman of 
more than common bravery and ability should 
level doivn to it. And it is here that lies the 
principle objection to democracy from the 
point of view of culture, that its notion of life 
and manners is a uniform notion, not admit- 
ting much variety of classes, and not allow- 
ing the high development of graceful and ac- 
complished humanity in any class which an 
aristocracy does at least encourage in one 
class, though it may be numerically a small 
class. I have not forgotten what Saint-Simon 
and La Bruyere have testified about the ig- 
norance of the old noblesse. Saint-Simon 
said that they were fit for nothing but fight- 
ing, and only qualified for promotion even in 
the army by seniority ; that the rest of their 



SCI THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

time was passed in ' ' the most deadly useless- 
ness, the consequence of their indolence and 
distaste for all instruction." lam sure that 
my modern artillery captain, notwithstand- 
his bad manners, knew more than any of 
his forefathers; but where was his " perfect 
knighthood?" And we easily forget "how 
much talent runs into manners," as Emerson 
says. From the artistic and poetical point of 
view, behavior is an expression of knowledge 
and taste and feeling in combination, as clear 
and legible as literature or painting, so that 
when the behavior is coarse and unbecoming 
we know that the perceptions cannot be deli- 
cate, whatever may have been learned at 
school. When Dr. Arnold travelled on the 
Continent, nothing struck him more than the 
absence of gentlemen. "We see no gentle- 
men anywhere," he writes from Italy. From 
France he writes: "Again I have been struck 
with the total absence of all gentlemen, and 
of all persons of the education and feelings 
of gentlemen." Now, although Dr. Arnold 
spoke merely from the experience of a tour- 
ist, and was perhaps not quite competent to 
judge of Frenchmen and Italians otherwise 
than from externals, still there was much 
truth in his observation. It was not quite 
absolutely true. I have known two or three 
Italian officers, and one Savoyard nobleman, 
and a Frenchman here and there, who were 
as perfect gentlemen as any to be found in 
England, but they were isolated like poets, 
and were in fact poets in behavior and self- 



ARI8T0CBACY AND DEMOCRACY. 365 

discipline. The plain truth is, that there is 
no distinct class in France maintaining good 
manners as a tradition common to all its 
members ; and this seems to be the inevitable 
defect of a democracy. It may be observed, 
further, that language itself is defiled by the 
vulgarity of the popular taste; that expres- 
sions are used continually, even by the upper 
middle class, which it is impossible to print, 
and which are too grossly indecent to find a 
place even in the dictionaries ; that respecta- 
ble men, having become insensible to the 
meaning of these expressions from hearing 
them used without intention, employ them 
constantly from habit, as they decorate their 
speech with oaths, whilst only purists refrain 
from them altogether. 

An aristocracy may be very narrow and 
intolerant, but it can only exclude from its 
own pale, whereas when a democracy is in- 
tolerant it excludes from all human inter- 
course. Our own aristocracy, as a class, 
rejects Dissenters, and artists, and men of 
science, but they flourish quite happily out- 
side of it. Now try to picture to yourself a 
great democracy having the same prejudices, 
who could get out of the democracy? All 
aristocracies are intolerant with reference, I 
will not say to religion, but, more accurately, 
with reference to the outward forms of relig- 
ion, and yet this aristocratic intolerance has 
not prevented the development of religious 
liberty, because the lower classes were not 
strictly bound by the customs of the nobility 



366 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and gentry. The unwritten law appears to 
be that members of an aristocracy shall con- 
form either to what is actually the State 
Church or to what has been the State Church 
at some former period of the national history. 
Although England is a Protestant country, 
an English gentleman does not lose caste when 
he joins the Roman Catholic communion ; 
but he loses caste when he becomes a Dis- 
senter. The influence of this caste-law in 
keeping the upper classes within the Churches 
of England and of Rome has no doubt been 
very considerable, but its influence on the 
nation generally has been incomparably less 
considerable than that of some equally de- 
cided social rule in the entire mind of a 
democracy. Had this rule of conformity to 
the religion of the State been that of the Eng- 
lish democracy, religious liberty would have 
been extinguished throughout the length and 
breadth of England. I say that the customs 
and convictions of a democracy are more 
dangerous to intellectual liberty than those 
of an aristocracy, because, in matters of cus- 
tom, the gentry rule only within their own 
park-palings, whereas the people, when power 
resides with them, rule wherever the breezes 
blow. A democracy that dislikes refinement 
and good manners can drive men of culture 
into solitude, and make morbid hermits of 
the very persons who ought to be the lights 
and leaders of humanity. It can cut short 
the traditions of good-breeding, the traditions 
of polite learning, the traditions of thoughtful 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 3G7 

leisure, and reduce the various national types 
of character to one type, that of the commis- 
voyageur. All men of refined sentiment in 
modern France lament the want of elevation 
in the bourgeoisie. They read nothing, they 
learn nothing, they think of nothing but 
money and the satisfaction of their appetites. 
There are exceptions, of course, but the tone 
of the class is mean and low, and devoid of 
natural dignity or noble aspiration. Their 
ignorance passes belief, and is accompanied 
by an absolute self-satisfaction. "La fin de 
la bourgeoisie," says an eminent French 
author, "commence parcequ'elle a les senti- 
ments de la populace. Je ne vois pas qu'elle 
lise d'autres journaux, qu'elle se regale d'une 
musique differente, qu'elle ait des plaisirs 
plus eleves. Chez Tune comme chez Tautre, 
c'est le meme amour de Targent, le meme 
respect du fait accompli, le meme besoin 
didoles pour les detruire, la meme haine de 
toute superiority, le meme esprit de denigre- 
ment, la meme crasse ignorance ! " M. Renan 
also complains that during the Second Empire 
the country sank deeper and deeper into vul- 
garity, forgetting its past history and its 
noble enthusiasms. ■ ' Talk to the peasant, to 
the socialist of the International, of France, 
of her past history, of her genius, he will not 
understand you. Military honor seems mad- 
ness to him; the taste for great things, the 
glory of the mind, are vain dreams; money 
spent for art and science is money thrown 
away foolishly. Such is the provincial spirit. " 



368 TIIE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

And if this is the provincial spirit, what fcthe 
spirit of the metropolitan democracy! Is it 
not clearly known to us by its acts? It had 
the opportunity, under the Commune, of 
showing the world how tenderly it cared for 
the monuments of national history, how anx- 
ious it was for the preservation of noble archi- 
tecture, of great libraries, of pictures that can 
never be replaced. Whatever may have been 
our illusions about the character of the Pa- 
risian democracy, we know it very accurately 
now. To say that it is brutal would be an 
inadequate use o\' language,- for the brutes are 
only indifferent to history and civilisation, 
not hostile to them. So far as it is possible 
for ns to understand the temper of that democ- 
racy, it appears to cherish an active and 
intense hatred for every conceivable kind of 
superiority, and an instinctive eagerness to 
abolish the past: or, as that is not possible, 
since the past will always have been in spite 
of it, then at least to efface all visible me- 
morials and destroy the bequests of all pre- 
ceding generations. If any one had allirmed, 
before the fail of Louis Napoleon, that the 
democratic spirit was capable of setting fire 
to the Louvre and the national archives and 
libraries, of deliberately planning the de- 
struction of all those magnificent edifices, 
ecclesiastical and civil, which were the glory 
of France and the delight of Europe, we 
should have attributed such an assertion to 
the exaggerations of reactionary fears. But 
since the year 1870 we do not speculate about 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 369 

the democratic temper in its intensest expres- 
sion ; we have seen it at work, and we know 
it. We know that every beautiful building, 
every precious manuscript and picture, has 
to be protected against the noxious swarm of 
Communards as a sea- jetty against the Pholas 
and the Teredo. 

Compare this temper with that of a Mar- 
quis of Hertford, a Duke of Devonshire, a 
Due de Luynes ! True guardians of the means 
of culture, these men have given splendid 
hospitality to the great authors and artists of 
past times, by keeping their works for the fu- 
ture with tender and reverent care. Nor has 
this function of high stewardship ever been 
more nobly exercised than it is to-day by that 
true knight and gentleman, Sir Richard Wal- 
lace. Think of the difference between this 
great-hearted guardian of priceless treasures, 
keeping them for the people, for civilization, 
and a base-spirited Communard setting fire 
to the library of the Louvre. 

The ultra-democratic spirit is hostile to cult- 
ure, from its hatred of all delicate and ro- 
mantic sentiment, from its scorn of the ten- 
derer and finer feelings of our nature, and es- 
pecially from its brutish incapacity to com- 
prehend the needs of the higher life. If it had 
its way we should be compelled by public 
opinion to cast all the records of our ances- 
tors, and the shields they wore in battle, into 
the foul waters of an eternal Lethe. The in- 
tolerance of the sentiment of birth, that noble 
sentiment which has animated so many hearts 
24 



370 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

with heroism, and urged them to deeds of 
honor, associated as it is with a cynical dis- 
belief in the existence of female virtue,* is 
one of the commonest signs of this evil spirit 
of detraction. It is closely connected with an 
ungrateful indifference towards all that our 
forefathers have done to make civilization 
possible for us. Now, although the intellect- 
ual spirit studies the past critically, and does 
not accept history as a legend is accepted by 
the credulous, still the intellectual spirit has 
a deep respect for all that is noble in the past, 
and would preserve the record of it forever. 
Can you not imagine, have you not actually 
seen, the heir of some ancient house who 
shares to the full the culture and aspirations 
of the age in which we live, and who never- 
theless preserves, with pious reverence, the 
towers his forefathers built on the ancestral 
earth, and the oaks they planted, and the 
shields that were carved on the tombs where 
the knights and their ladies rest? Be sure 
that a right understanding of the present is 
compatible with a right and reverent under- 
standing of the past, and that, although we 
may closely question history and tradition, no 
longer with childlike faith, still the spirit of 
true culture would never efface their vestiges. 
It was not Michelet, nob Renan, not Hugo, 
who set fire to the Palace of Justice and im- 
perilled the Sainte-Chapelle. 

* The association between the two is this. If you believe 
that you are descended from a distinguished ancestor, you 
are simple enough to believe in his wife's fidelity. 



ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 371 

And yet, notwithstanding all these vices 
and excesses of the democratic spirit, not- 
withstanding the meanness of the middle 
classes and the violence of the mob, there is 
one all-powerful reason why our best hopes 
for the liberal culture of the intellect are cen- 
tred in the democratic idea. The reason is, 
that aristocracies think too much of persons 
and positions to weigh facts and opinions 
justly. In an aristocratic society it is thought 
unbecoming to state your views in their full 
force in the presence of any social superior. 
If you state them at all you must soften them 
to suit the occasion, or you will be a sinner 
against good-breeding. Observe how timid 
and acquiescent the ordinary Englishman be- 
comes in the presence of a lord. No right- 
minded person likes to be thought impudent, 
and where the tone of society refers every- 
thing to position, you are considered impu- 
dent when you forget your station. But 
what has my station to do with the truths the 
intellect perceives, that lie entirely outside of 
me? From the intellectual point of view, it 
is a necessary virtue to forget your station, to 
forget yourself entirely, and to think of the 
subject only, in a manner perfectly disinter- 
ested. Anonymous journalism was a device 
to escape from that continual reference to the 
rank and fortune of the speaker which is an 
inveterate habit in all aristocratic communi- 
ties. A young man without title or estate 
knows that he would not be listened to in the 
presence of his social superiors, so he holds 



372 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

his tongue in society and relieves himself by 
an article in the Times. The anonymous 
newspapers and reviews are a necessity in an 
aristocratic community, for they are the only 
means of attracting attention to facts and 
opinions without attracting it to yourself, the 
only way of escaping the personal question, 
" Who and what are you, that you venture 
to speak so plainly, and where is your stake 
in the country?" 

The democratic idea, by its theoretic equal- 
ity amongst men, affords an almost complete 
relief from this impediment to intellectual 
conversation. The theory of equality is good, 
because it negatives the interference of rank 
and wealth in matters that appertain to the 
intellect or to the moral sense. It may even 
go one step farther with advantage, and ig- 
nore intellectual authority also. The perfec- 
tion of the intellectual spirit is the entire for- 
getf ulness of persons, in the application of the 
whole power of the mind to things, and phe- 
nomena, and ideas. Not to mind whether the 
speaker is of noble or humble birth, rich or 
poor; this indeed is much, but we ought to at- 
tain a like indifference to the authority of the 
most splendid reputation. l ' Every great ad- 
vance in natural knowledge," says Professor 
Huxley, ' ' has involved the absolute rejection 
of authority, the cherishing of the keenest 
scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of 
blind faith; and the most ardent votary of 
science holds his firmest convictions, not be- 
cause the men he most venerates hold them, 



ARISTOCRACY ANJj DEMOCRACY. 373 

not because their verity is testified by por- 
tents and wonders, but because his experience 
teaches him that whenever he chooses to 
bring these convictions into contact with 
their primary source, Nature — whenever he 
thinks tit to test them by appealing to expe- 
riment and to observation — Nature will con- 
firm them." 



PART IX. 

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 



LETTER I. 



TO A LADY WHO DOUBTED THE REALITY OF IN 
TELLECTUAL FRIENDSHIPS. 

That intellectual friendships are in their nature temporary, 
when there is no basis of feeling to support them — Their 
freshness soon disappears — Danger of satiety — Temporary 
acquaintances — Succession m friendships — Free commu- 
nication of intellectual results— Friendships between ripe 
and immature men— Rembrandt and Hoogstraten— Tradi- 
tion transmitted through these friendships. 

I heartily agree with you so far as this, 
that intellectual relations will not sustain 
friendship for very long, unless there is also 
some basis of feeling to sustain it. And still 
there is a certain reality in the friendships of 
the intellect whilst they last, and they are re- 
membered gratefully for their profit when in 
the course of nature they have ceased. We 
may wisely contract them, and blamelessly 
dissolve them when the occasion that created 
them has gone by. They are like business 
partnerships, contracted from motives of in- 
terest, and requiring integrity above all 
things, with mutual respect and consideration, 
yet not necessarily either affection or the sem- 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 375 

blance of it. Since the motive of the intellect- 
ual existence is the desire to ascertain and 
communicate truth, a sort of positive and 
negative electricity immediately establishes 
itself between those who want to know and 
those who desire to communicate their knowl- 
edge ; and the connection is mutually agreea- 
ble until these two desires are satisfied. 
When this happens, the connection naturally 
ceases ; but the memory of it usually leaves a 
permanent feeling of good-will, and a perma- 
nent disposition to render services of the same 
order. This, in brief, is the whole philosophy 
of the subject; but it maybe observed far- 
ther, that the purely intellectual intercourse 
which often goes by the name of friendship 
affords excellent opportunities for the forma- 
tion of real friendship, since it cannot be long 
continued without revealing much of the 
whole nature of the associates. 

We do not easily exhaust the mind of an- 
other, but we easily exhaust what is accessi- 
ble to us in his mind ; and when we have done 
this, the first benefit of intercourse is at an 
end. Then comes a feeling of dulness and 
disappointment, which is full of the bitterest 
discouragement to the inexperienced. In ma- 
turer life we are so well prepared for this that 
it discourages us no longer. We know before- 
hand that the freshness of the mind that was 
new to us will rapidly wear away, that we 
shall soon assimilate the fragment of it which 
is all that ever can be made our own, so we 
enjoy the freshness whilst it lasts, and are 



376 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

even careful of it as a fruiterer is of the bloom 
upon his grapes and plums. It may seem a 
hard and worldly thing to say, but it appears 
to me that a wise man might limit his inter- 
course with others before there was any dan- 
ger of satiety, as it is wisdom in eating to rise 
from table with an appetite. Certainly, if the 
friends of our intellect live near enough for 
us to anticipate no permanent separation by 
mere distance, if we may expect to meet them 
frequently, to have many opportunities for a 
more thorough and searching exploration of 
their minds, it is a wise policy not to exhaust 
them all at once. With the chance acquaint- 
ances we make in travelling, the case is alto- 
gether different; and this is, no doubt, the 
reason why men are so astonishingly com- 
municative when they never expect to see 
each other any more. You feel an intense 
curiosity about some temporary companion ; 
you make many guesses about him; and to 
induce him to tell you as much as possible in 
the short time you are likely to be together, 
you win his confidence by a frankness that 
would perhaps considerably surprise your 
nearest neighbors and relations. This is due 
to the shortness of the opportunity ; but with 
people who live in the same place, you will 
proceed much more deliberately. 

Whoever would remain regularly provided 
with intellectual friends, ought to arrange a 
succession of friendships, as gardeners do 
with peas and strawberries, so that, whilst 
some are fully ripe, others should be ripening 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 377 

to replace them. Th^s doctrine sounds like 
blasphemy against friendship; but it is not 
intended to apply to the sacred friendship of 
the heart, which ought to be permanent like 
marriage, only to the friendship of the head, 
which is of the utmost utility to culture, yet 
in its nature temporary. I know a distin- 
guished Englishman who is quite remarkable 
for the talent with which he arranges his in- 
intellectual friendships, so as never to be de- 
pendent on any one, but always sure of the in- 
tercourse he needs, both now and in the fu- 
ture. He will never be isolated, never with- 
out some fresh and living interest in human- 
ity. It may seem to you that there is a la- 
mentable want of faith in this ; and I grant 
at once that a system of this kind does pre- 
suppose the extinction of the boyish belief in 
the permanence of human relations ; still, it 
indicates a large-minded confidence in the 
value of human intercourse, an enjoyment of 
the present, a hope for the future, and a right 
appreciation of the past. 

Nothing is more beautiful in the intellectual 
life than the willingness of all cultivated people 
— unless they happen to be accidentally soured 
by circumstances that have made them 
wretched — to communicate to others the re- 
sults of all their toil. It is true that they ap- 
parently lose nothing by the process, and that 
a rich man who gives some portion of his ma- 
terial wealth exercises a greater self-denial; 
still, when you consider that men of culture, 
in teaching others, abandon something of then* 



378 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

relative superiority, and often voluntarily in- 
cur the sacrifice of what is most precious to 
them, namely, their time, I think you will ad- 
mit that their readiness in this kind of gener- 
osity is one of the finest characteristics of 
highly -developed humanity. Of all intellect- 
ual friendships, none are so beautiful as those 
which subsist between old and ripe men and 
their younger brethren in science, or litera- 
ture, or art. It is by these private friendships, 
even more than by public performance, that 
the tradition of sound thinking and great do- 
ing is perpetuated from age to age. Hoog- 
straten, who was a pupil of Rembrandt, asked 
him many questions, which the great master 
answered thus: — " Try to put well in practice 
what you already know ; in so doing you will, 
in good time, discover the hidden things which 
you now inquire about." That answer of 
Rembrandt's is typical of the maturest teach- 
ing. How truly friendly it is; how full of 
encouragement; how kind in its admission 
that the younger artist did already know 
something worth putting into practice ; and 
yet, at the same time, how judicious in its re- 
serve ! Few of us have been so exceptionally 
unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, 
some experienced friend who has helped us by 
precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We 
cannot render it in kind ; but perhaps in the 
fulness of time it may become our noblest duty 
to aid another as we have ourselves been aid- 
ed, and to transmit to him an invaluable treas- 
ure, the tradition of the intellectual life. 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE, 379 



LETTER II. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN 
FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. 

Certain dangers to the intellectual life— Difficult to resist the 
influences of society — Gilding — Fashionable education — 
Affectations of knowledge — Not easy to ascertain what 
people really know— Value of real knowledge diminished 
—Some good effects of affectations— Their bad effect on 
workers — Skill in amusements. 

The kind of life which you have been lead- 
ing for the last three or four years will always 
be valuable to you as a past experience, but if 
the intellectual ambition you confess to me is 
quite serious, I would venture to suggest that 
there are certain dangers in the continuation 
of your present existence if altogether unin- 
terrupted. Pray do not suspect me of any 
narrow prejudice against human intercourse, 
or of any wish to make a hermit of you before 
your time, but believe that the few observa- 
tions I have to make are grounded simply 
on the desire that your career should be en- 
tirely satisfactory to your own maturer judg- 
ment, when you will look back upon it after 
many years. 

An intellectual man may go into general 
society quite safely if only he can resist its 
influence upon his serious work ; but such re- 
sistance is difficult in maturity and impossi- 
ble in youth. 

The sort of influence most to be dreaded is 
this. Society is, and must be, based upon ap- 
pearances, and not upon the deepest realities. 



380 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

It requires some degree of reality to produce 
the appearance, but not a substantial reality. 
Gilding is the perfect type of what Society 
requires. A certain quantity of gold is neces- 
sary for the work of the gilder, but a very 
small quantity, and skill in applying the 
metal so as to cover a large surface, is of 
greater consequence than the weight of the 
metal itself. The mind of a fashionable per- 
son is a carefully gilded mind. 

Consider fashionable education. Society 
imperatively requires an outside knowledge 
of many things; not permitting the frank 
confession of ignorance, whilst it is yet satis- 
fied with a degree of knowledge differing 
only from avowed ignorance in permitting 
you to be less sincere. All young ladies, 
whether gifted by nature with any musical 
talent or not, are compelled to say chat they 
have learned to play upon the piano; all 
young gentlemen are compelled to affect to 
know Latin. In the same way the public 
opinion of Society compels its members to 
pretend to know and appreciate the master- 
pieces of literature and art. There is, in 
truth, so much compulsion of this kind that it 
is not easy to ascertain what people do really 
know and care about until they admit you 
into their confidence. 

The inevitable effect of these affectations is 
to diminish the value, in Society, of genuine 
knowledge and accomplishment of all kinds. 
I know a man who is a Latin scholar ; he is 
one of the few moderns who have really 



SOCIETY ANB SOLITUDE. 381 

learned Latin : but in fashionable society this 
brings him no distinction, because we are all 
supposed to know Latin, and the true scholar, 
when he appears, cannot be distinguished 
from the multitude of fashionable pretenders. 
I know another man who can draw; there 
are not many men, even amongst artists, 
who can draw soundly ; yet in fashionable so- 
ciety he does not get the serious sort of re- 
spect which he deserves, because fashionable 
people believe that drawing is an accomplish- 
ment generally attainable by young ladies 
and communicable by governesses. I have 
no wish to insinuate -that Society is wrong, in 
requiring a certain pretence to education in 
various subjects, and a certain affectation of 
interest in masterpieces, for these pretences 
and affectations do serve to deliver it from 
the darkness of a quite absolute ignorance. 
A society of fashionable people who think it 
necessary to be able to talk superficially 
about the labors of men really belonging to 
the intellectual class, is always sure to be 
much better informed than a Society such as 
that of the French peasantry, for example, 
where nobody is expected to know anything. 
It is well for Society itself that it should pro- 
fess a deep respect for classical learning, for 
the great modern poets and painters, for sci- 
entific discoverers, even though the majority 
of its members do not seriously care about 
them. The pretension itself requires a cer- 
tain degree of knowledge, as gilding requires 
a certain quantity of gold. 



382 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

The evil effects of these affectations may be 
summed up in a sentence. They diminish 
the apparent value of the realities which they 
imitate, and they tend to weaken our enthusi- 
asm for those great realities, and our ardor in 
the pursuit of them. The impression which 
fashionable society produces upon a student 
who has strength enough to resist it, is a 
painful sense of isolation in his earnest work. 
If he goes back to the work with courage un- 
diminished, he still clearly realizes — what it 
would be better for him not to realize quite 
so clearly — the uselessness of going beyond 
fashionable standards, if he aims at social 
success. And there is still another thing to be 
said which concerns you just now very par- 
ticularly. Whoever leads the intellectual life 
in earnest is sure on some points to fail in 
strict obedience to the exigencies of fashion- 
able life, so that, if fashionable successes are 
still dear to him, he will be constantly tempt- 
ed to make some such reflections as the fol- 
lowing: — " Here am I, giving years and years 
of labor to a pursuit which brings no external 
reward, when half as much work would keep 
me abreast of the society I live with, in every- 
thing it really cares about. I know quite 
well all that my learning is costing me. 
Other men outshine me easily in social pleas- 
ures and accomplishments. My skill at bill- 
iards and on the moors is evidently declin- 
ing, and I cannot ride or drive so well as fel- 
lows who do very little else. In fact I am be- 
coming an old muff, and all I have to show 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE, 383 

on the other side is a degree of scholarship 
which only six men in Europe can appreciate, 
and a speciality in natural science in which 
my little discoveries are sure to be either an- 
ticipated or left behind." 

The truth is, that to succeed well in fashion- 
able society the higher intellectual attain- 
ments are not so useful as distinguished skill 
in those amusements which are the real busi- 
of the fashionable world. The three things 
which tell best in your favor amongst young 
gentlemen are to be an excellent shot, to ride 
well to hounds, and to play billiards with 
great skill. I wish to say nothing against any 
of these accomplishments, having an espe- 
cially hearty admiration and respect for all 
good horsemen, and considering the game of 
billiards the most perfectly beautiful of games ; 
still, the fact remains that to do these things 
as well as some young gentlemen do them, we 
must devote the time which they devote, and 
if we regularly give nine hours a day to grav- 
er occupations, pray, how and where are we 
to find it? 



384 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 



LETTER III. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN 
FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. 

Some exceptional men may live alternately in different worlds 
— Instances — Differences between the fashionable and the 
intellectual spirit — Men sometimes made unfashionable byf 
special natural gifts — Sometimes by trifling external cir- 
cumstances—Anecdote of Ampere— He did not shine in so- 
ciety — His wife's anxieties about his material wants — Ap- 
parent contrast between Ampere and Oliver Goldsmith. 

You ask me why there should be any fun- 
damental incompatibility between the fash- 
ionable and the intellectual lives. It seems to 
you that the two might possibly be reconciled, 
and you mention instances of men who at- 
tained intellectual distinction without desert- 
ing the fashionable world. 

Yes, there have been a few examples of men 
endowed with that overflow of energy which 
permits the most opposite pursuits, and ena- 
bles its possessors to live, apparently, in two 
worlds between which there is not any nat- 
ural affinity. A famous French novelist once 
took the trouble to elaborate the portrait of a 
lady who passed one half of her time in virtue 
and churches, whilst she employed the other 
half in the wildest adventures. In real life 
I may allude to a distinguished English en- 
graver, who spent a fortnight over his plate 
and a fortnight in some fashionable watering- 
place, alternately, and who found this distribu- 
tion of his time not unfavorable to the elasticity 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. Z& 

of his mind. Many hard-working Londoners , 
who fairly deserve to be considered intellect- 
ual men, pass their days in professional labor 
and their evenings in fashionable society. 
But in all instances of this kind the profes- 
sional work is serious enough, and regular 
enough, to give a very substantial basis to the 
life, so that the times of recreation are kept 
daily subordinate by the very necessity of cir- 
cumstances. If you had a profession, and 
were obliged to follow it in earnest six or eight 
hours a day, the more Society amused you, 
the better. The danger in your case is that 
your whole existence may take a fashionable 
tone. 

The esprit or tone of fashion differs from the 
intellectual tone in ways which I will attempt, 
to define. Fashion is nothing more than ths 
temporary custom of rich and idle people who 
make it their principal business to study the 
external elegance of life. This custom inces- 
santly changes. If your habits of mind and 
life change with it you are a fashionable per- 
son, but if your habits of mind and life either 
remain permanently fixed or follow some law 
of your own individual nature, then you are 
outside of fashion. The intellectual spirit is 
remarkable for its independence of custom, 
and therefore on many occasions it will clash 
with the fashionable spirit. It does so most 
frequently in the choice of pursuits, and in 
the proportionate importance which the indi- 
vidual student will (in his own case) assign to 
hi? pursuits. The regulations of fashionable 
25 



386 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

life have fixed, at the least temporarily, the 
degree of time and attention which a fashion- 
able person may devote to this thing or that. 
The intellectual spirit ignores these regula- 
tions, and devotes its possessor, or more ac- 
curately its possessed, to the intellectual spe- 
ciality for which he has most aptitude, often 
leaving him ignorant of what fashion has de- 
cided to be essential. After living the intel- 
lectual life for several years he will know too 
much of one thing and too little of some other 
things to be in conformity with the fashion- 
able ideal. For example, the fashionable ideal 
of a gentleman requires classical scholarship, 
but it is so difficult for artists and men of sci- 
ence to be classical scholars also that in this 
respect they are likely to fall short. I knew 
a man who became unfashionable because he 
had a genius for mechanics. He was always 
about steam-engines, and, though a gentleman 
by birth, associated from choice with men 
who understood the science that chiefly inter- 
ested him, of which all fashionable people 
were so profoundly ignorant that he habit- 
ually kept out of their way. He, on his part, 
neglected scholarship and literature and all 
that "artistry of life," as Mr. Eobert Lytton 
3alls it, in which fashionable society excels. 
Men are frequently driven into unfashionable 
existence by the very force and vigor of their 
own intellectual gifts, and sometimes by ex- 
ternal circumstances, apparently most trifling, 
yet of infinite influence on human destiny. 
There is a good instance of this in a letter from 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 387 

Ampere to his young wife, that "Julie " who 
was lost to him so soon. * ' I went to dine 
yesterday at Madame Beauregard's with 
hands blackened by a harmless drug which 
stains the skin for three or four days. She de- 
clared that it looked like manure, and left 
the table, saying that she would dine when 
I was at a distance. I promised not to re- 
turn there before my hands were white. Of 
course I shall never enter the house again." 

Here we have an instance of a man of sci- 
ence who has temporarily disqualified him- 
self for polite society by an experiment in the 
pursuit of knowledge. What do you think 
of the vulgarity of Madame Beauregard? To 
me it appears the perfect type of that pre-oc- 
cupation about appearances which blinds the 
genteel vulgar to the true nobility of life. 
Were not Ampere's stained hands nobler 
than many white ones? It is not necessary 
for every intellectual worker to blacken his 
fingers with chemicals, but a kind of rust 
very frequently comes over him which ought 
to be as readily forgiven, yet rarely is for- 
given. "In his relations with the world," 
writes the biographer of Ampere, "the au- 
thority of superiority disappeared. To this 
the course of years brought no alternative. 
Ampere become celebrated, laden with honor- 
able distinctions, the great Ampere ! outside 
the speculations of the intellect, was hesitat- 
ing and timid again, disquieted and troubled, 
and more disposed to accord his confidence 
to others than to himself." 



388 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Intellectual pursuits did not qualify Ampere, 
they do not qualify any one, for success in 
fashionable society. To succeed in the world 
you ought to be of the world, so as to share 
the things which interest it without too wide 
a deviation from the prevalent current of 
your thoughts. Its passing interests, its tem- 
porary customs, its transient phases of senti- 
ment and opinion, ought to be for the moment 
your own interests, your own feelings and 
opinions. A mind absorbed as Ampere's was 
in the contemplation and elucidation of the 
unchangeable laws of nature, is too much 
fixed upon the permanent to adapt itself 
naturally to these ever-varying estimates. 
He did not easily speak the world's lighter 
language, he could not move with its mobili- 
ty. Such men forget even what they eat and 
what they put on ; Ampere's young wife was 
in constant anxiety, whilst the b pair were 
separated by the severity of their fate, as 
to the sufficiency of his diet and the de- 
cency of his appearance. One day she writes 
to him to mind not to go out in his shabby old 
coat, and in the same letter she entreats him 
to purchase a bottle of wine, so that when he 
took no milk or broth he would find it, and 
when it was all drunk she tells him to buy 
another bottle. Afterwards she asks him 
whether he makes a good lire, and if he has 
any chairs in his room. In another letter she 
inquires if his bed is comfortable, and in 
another she tells him to mind about his acids, 
for he has burnt holes in his blue stockings. 



SOCIETY Attn SOLITUDE^ 389 

Again, she begs him to try to have a passably 
decent appearance, because that will give 
pleasure to his poor wife. He answers, to 
tranquillize her, that he does not burn his 
things now, and that he makes chemical ex- 
periments only in his old breeches with his 
gray coat and his waistcoat of greenish velvet. 
But one day he is forced to confess that she 
must send him new trousers if he is to ap- 
pear before MM. Delambre and Villars. He 
44 does not know what to do, " his best breeches 
still smell of turpentine, and, having wished 
to put on trousers to go to the Society of Emu- 
lation, he saw the hole which Barrat fancied 
he had mended become bigger than ever, so 
that it showed the piece of different cloth 
which he had sown under it. He adds that 
his wife will be afraid that he will spoil his 
" beau pantalon" but he promises to send it 
back to her as clean as when he received it. 
How different is all this from that watchful 
care about externals which marks the man of 
fashion! Ampere was quite a young man 
then, still almost a bridegroom, yet he is al- 
ready so absorbed in the intellectual life as to 
forget appearances utterly, except when Ju- 
lie, with feminine watchfulness, writes to re- 
call them to his mind. I am not defending 
or advocating this carelessness. It is better 
to be neat and tidy than to go in holes and 
patches ; but I desire to insist upon the radi- 
cal difference between the fashionable spirit 
and the intellectual spirit. And this differ- 
ence, which shows itself in these external 



390 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

things, is not less evident in the clothing or 
preparation of the mind. Ampere's intellect, 
great and noble as it was, could scarcely 
be considered more suitable for le grand 
monde than the breeches that smelt of tur- 
pentine, or the trousers made ragged by 
aquafortis. 

A splendid contrast, as to tailoring, was 
our own dear Oliver Goldsmith, who dis- 
played himself in those wonderful velvet 
coats and satin small-clothes from Mr. Fil- 
by's, which are more famous than the finest 
garments ever worn by prince or peer. Who 
does not remember that bloom-colored coat 
which the ablest painters have studiously im- 
mortalized, made by John Filby, at the Har- 
row, in Water Lane (best advertised of tail- 
ors!), and that charming blue velvet suit, 
which Mr. Filby was never paid for? Surely 
a poet so splendid was fit for the career of 
fashion! No, Oliver Goldsmith's velvet and 
lace were the expression of a deep and pain- 
ful sense of personal unfitness. They were 
the fine frame which is intended to pass off 
an awkward and imperfect picture. There 
was a quieter dignity in Johnson's threadbare 
sleeves. Johnson, the most influential though 
not the most elegant intellect of his time, is 
grander in his neglect of fashion than Gold- 
smith in his ruinous subservience. And if it 
were permitted to me to speak of two or 
three great geniuses who adorn the age in 
which we ourselves are living, I might add 
that they seem to follow the example of the 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 301 

author of " Rasselas " rather than that of Mr. 
Filby's illustrious customer. They remind 
me of a good old squire who, from a fine sen- 
timent of duty, permitted the village artist 
to do his worst upon him, and incurred there- 
by this withering observation from his met- 
ropolitan tailor: "You are covered, sir, but 
you are not dressed ! " 



LETTER IV. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN 
FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. 

Test of professions — Mobility of fashionable taste — Practical 
service of an external deference to culture — Incompati- 
bility between fashionable and intellectual lives— What 
each has to offer. 

Your polite, almost diplomatic answer to 
toy letter about fashionable society may be 
not unfairly concentrated into some such par- 
agraph as the following : — 

44 What grounds have I for concluding that 
the professed tastes and opinions of Society 
are in any degree insincere? May not society 
be quite sincere in the preferences which it 
professes, and are not the preferences them 
selves almost always creditable to the good 
taste and really advanced culture of the So- 
ciety which I suspect of a certain degree of 
affectation ? " 

This is the sense of your letter, and in reply 
to it I give you a simple but sure test. Is the 



392 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

professed opinion carried out in practice, 
when there are fair opportunities for prac- 
tice? 

Let us go so far as to examine a particular 
instance. Your friends profess to appreciate 
classical literature. Do they read it? Or, on 
the other hand, do they confine themselves 
to believing that it is a good thing for other 
people to read it? 

When I was a schoolboy, people told me 
that the classical authors of antiquity were 
eminently useful, and indeed absolutely nec- 
essary to the culture of the human mind, 
but I perceived that they did not read them. 
So I have heard many people express great 
respect for art and science, only they did not 
go so far as to master any department of art 
or science. 

If you will apply this test to the professions 
of what is especially called fashionable society 
it is probable that you will arrive at the con- 
clusions of the minority, which I have endeav- 
ored to express. You will find that the fash- 
ionable world remains very contentedly out- 
side the true working intellectual life, and 
does not really share either its labors or its 
aspirations. 

Another kind of eyidence, which tells in the 
same direction, is the mobility of fashionable 
taste. At one time some studies are fash- 
ionable, at another time these are neglected 
and others have taken their place. You will 
not find this fickleness in the true intellectual 
world, which steadily pursues all its various 



SOCIETY AX J) SOLViUDK. 303 

studies, and keeps them well abreast, century 
after century. 

If I insist upon this distinction with refer- 
ence to you, do not accuse me of hostility even 
to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great 
Divine institutions of human society, and the 
best philosophy rebels against none of the au- 
thorities that be, but studies and endeavors to 
explain them. The external deference which 
Society yields to culture is practically of great 
service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is 
external. The sort of good effect is in the in- 
tellectual sphere what the good effect of a gen- 
eral religious profession is in the moral sphere. 
All fashionable society goes to church. Fash- 
ionable religion differs from the religion of 
Peter and Paul as fashionable science differs 
from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, not- 
withstanding this difference, the profession of 
religion is useful to Society as some restraint, 
at least during one day out of seven, upon its 
inveterate tendency to live exclusively for its 
amusement. And if any soul happens to 
come into existence in the fashionable world 
which has the genuine religious nature, that 
nature has a chance of developing itself, and 
of finding ready to hand certain customs 
which are favorable to its well-being. So it 
is, though in quite a different direction, with 
the esteem which Society professes for intel- 
lectual pursuits. It is an esteem in great part 
merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is 
nominal, and still it helps and favors the early 
development of the genuine faculty where it 



394 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

exists. It is certainly a great help to us that 
fashionable society, which has such a tremen- 
dous, such an almost irresistible power for 
good or evil, does not openly discourage our 
pursuits, but on the contrary regards them 
with great external deference and respect. 
The recognition which Society has given to 
artists has been wanting in frankness and in 
promptitude, though even in this" case much 
may be said to excuse a sort of hesitation 
rather than refusal which was attributable to 
the strangeness and novelty of the artistic 
caste in England ; but Society has far more 
than a generation professed a respect for liter- 
ature and erudition which has helped those 
two branches of culture more effectually than 
great subsidies of money. The exact truth 
seems to be that Society is sincere in approv- 
ing our devotion to these pursuits, but is not 
yet sufficiently interested in them to appreci- 
ate them otherwise than from the outside, just 
as a father and mother applaud their boys for 
reading Thucydides, yet do not read him 
themselves, either in the original or in a trans- 
lation. 

All that I care to insist upon is that there 
is a degree of incompatibility between the 
fashionable and the intellectual lives which 
makes it necessary, at a certain time, to 
choose one or the other as our own. There is 
no hostility, there need not be any uncharit- 
able feeling on one side or the other, but there 
must be a resolute choice between the two. 
If you decide for the intellectual life, you will 



SOCIETY AND SOLLTULE. 395 

incur a definite loss to set against your gain. 
Your existence may have calmer and pro- 
founder satisfactions, but it will be less amus- 
ing, and even in an appreciable degree less 
human; less in harmony, I mean, with tho 
common instincts and feelings of humanity 
For the fashionable world, although decorat- 
ed by habits of expense, has enjoyment for 
its object, and arrives at enjoyment by those 
methods which the experience of generations 
has proved to be most efficacious. Variety 
of amusement, frequent change of scenery 
and society, healthy exercise, plea&x&t occu- 
pation of the mind without fatigue — these 
things do indeed make existence agreeable to 
human nature, and the science of living agree- 
ably is better understood in the fashionable 
society of England than by laborious students 
and savans. The life led by that society is 
the true heaven of the natural man, who 
likes to have frequent feasts and a hearty 
appetite, who enjoys the varying spectacle 
of wealth, and splendor, and pleasure, who 
loves to watch, from the Olympus of his per- 
sonal ease, the curious results of labor in 
which he takes no part, the interesting inge- 
nuity of the toiling world below. In ex- 
change for these varied pleasures of the spec- 
tator the intellectual life can offer you but 
one satisfaction, for all its promises are re- 
ducible simply to this, that you shall come at 
last, after infinite labor, into contact with 
some great reality— that you shall know, and 
do, in such sort that you will feel yourself on 



m THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

firm ground and be recognized — probably not 
much applauded, but yet recognized — as a 
fellow-laborer by other knowers and doers. 
Before you come to this, most of your present 
accomplishments will be abandoned by your- 
self as unsatisfactory and insufficient, but one 
or two of them will be turned to better ac- 
count, and will give you after many years a 
tranquil self-respect, and, what is still rarer 
and better, a very deep and earnest reverence 
for the greatness which is above you. Severed 
from the vanities of the Illusory, you will live 
with the realities of knowledge, as one who 
has quitted the painted scenery of the theatre 
to listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the 
granite hills. 



LETTER V. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO KEPT ENTIRELY 
OUT OF COMPANY. 

That Society which is frivolous in the mass contains individ- 
uals who are not frivolous— A piece of the author's early 
experience— Those who keep out of Society miss oppor- 
tunities—People talk about what they have in common— 
That we ought to be tolerant of dulness— The loss to 
Society if superior men all.held aloof —Utility of the gifted 
in general society— They ought not to submit to expul- 
sion. 

I willingly concede all that you say against 
fashionable society as a whole. It is, as you 
say, frivolous, bent on amusement, incapable 
of attention sufficiently prolonged to grasp 
any serious subject, and liable both to confu- 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 397 

sion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it 
hastily forms or easily receives. You do 
right, assuredly, not to let it waste your most 
valuable hours, but I believe also that you do 
wrong in keeping" out of it altogether. 

The society which seems so frivolous in 
masses contains individual members who, if 
you knew^ them better, would be able and 
willing to render you the most efficient intel- 
lectual help, and you miss this help by 
restricting yourself exclusively to books. 
Nothing can replace the conversation of liv- 
ing men and women; not even the richest 
literature can replace it. 

Many years ago I was thrown by accident 
amongst a certain society of Englishmen who, 
when they were all together, never talked 
about anything worth talking about. Their 
general conversations were absolutely empty 
and null, and I concluded, as young men so 
easily conclude, that those twenty or thirty 
gentlemen had not half a dozen ideas amongst 
them. A little reflection might have remind- 
ed me that my own talk was no better than 
theirs, and consequently that there might be 
others in the company who also knew more 
and thought more than they expressed. I 
found out, by accident, after awhile, that 
some of these men had more than common 
culture in various directions ; one or two had 
travelled far, and brought home the results of 
much observation; one or two had read 
largely, and with profit ; more than one had 
studied a science ; five or six had seen a great 



398 THE INTELLECTUAL LIVE. 

deal of the world. It was a youthful mistake 
to conclude that, because their general con- 
versation was very dull, the men were dull 
individually. The general conversations of 
English society are dull; it is a national 
characteristic. But the men themselves are 
individually often very well informed, and 
quite capable of imparting their information 
to a single interested listener. The art is to 
be that listener. ■ Englishmen have the great- 
est dread of producing themselves in the semi- 
publicity of a general conversation, because 
they fear that their special topics may not be 
cared for by some of the persons present ; but 
if you can get one of them into a quiet corner 
by himself, and humor his shyness with suffi- 
cient delicacy and tact, he will disburden his 
mind at last, and experience a relief in so 
doing. 

By keeping out of society altogether you 
miss these precious opportunities. The wise 
course is to mix as much with the world as 
may be possible without withdrawing too 
much time from your serious studies, but not 
to expect anything valuable from the general 
talk, which is nothing but a neutral medium 
in which intelligences float and move as 
yachts do in sea-water, and for which they 
ought not to be held individually responsible. 
The talk of Society answers its purpose if it 
simply permits many different people to come 
together without clashing, and the purpose 
of its conventions is the avoidance of colli- 
sion. In England the small talk is heavy. 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. Z% 

like water; in France it is light as air; in 
both countries it is a medium and no more. 

Society talks, by preference, about amuse- 
ments ; it does so because when people meet 
for recreation they wish to relieve their 
minds from serious cares, and also for the 
practical reason that Society must talk about 
what its members have in common, and their 
amusements are more in common than their 
work. As M. Thiers recommended the repub- 
lican form of government in France on the 
ground that it was the form which divided 
his countrymen least, so a polite* and highly 
civilized society chooses for the subject of 
general conversation the topic which is 
least likely to separate the different people 
who are present. It almost always happens 
that the best topic having this recommenda- 
tion is some species of amusement; since 
amusements are easily learnt outside the busi- 
ness of life, and we are all initiated into them 
in youth. 

For these reasons I think that we ought to 
be extremely tolerant of the dulness or frivol- 
ity which may seem to prevail in any nu- 
merous company, and not to conclude too 
hastily that the members of it are in any de- 
gree more dull or frivolous than ourselves. 
It is unfortunate, certainly, that the art of 
general conversation is not so successfully 
cultivated as it might be, and there are rea- 
sons for believing that our posterity will sur- 
pass us in this respect, because as culture in- 
creases the spirit of toleration increases with 



400 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

it, so that the great questions of politics and 
religion, in which all are interested, may be 
discussed more safely than they could be at 
the present day, by persons of different ways 
of thinking. But even the sort of general 
conversation we have now, poor as it may 
seem, still sufficiently serves as a medium for 
human intercourse, and permits us to meet 
on a common ground where we may select at 
leisure the agreeable or instructive friends 
that our higher intellect needs, and without 
whom the intellectual life is one of the ghast- 
liest of solitudes. 

And now permit me to add a few observa- 
tions on another aspect of this subject, which 
is not without its importance. 

Let us suppose that every one of rather 
more than ordinary capacity and culture were 
to act as you yourself are acting, and with- 
draw entirely from general society. Let us 
leave out of consideration for the present the 
loss to their private culture which would be 
the consequence of missing every opportunity 
for forming new intellectual friendships. Let 
us consider, this time, what would be the 
consequence to Society itself. 

If all the cultivated men were withdrawn 
from it, the general tone of Society would in- 
evitably descend much lower even than it is 
at present; it would sink so low that the 
whole national intellect would undergo a sure 
and inevitable deterioration. It is plainly the 
duty of men situated as you are, who havo 
been endowed by nature with superior facul- 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 401 

ties, and who have enlarged thein by the ac- 
quisition of knowledge, to preserve Society by 
their presence from an evil so surely prolific 
of bad consequences. If Society is less nar- 
row, and selfish, and intolerant, and apathetic 
than it used to be, it is because they who are 
the salt of the earth have not disdained to 
mix with its grosser and earthier elements. 
All the improvement in public sentiment, and 
the advancement in general knowledge which 
have marked the course of recent generations, 
are to be attributed to the wholesome influ- 
ence of men who could think and feel, and 
who steadily exercised, often quite obscurely, 
yet not the less usefully in their time and 
place, the subtle but powerful attraction of the 
greater mind over the less. Instead of com- 
plaining that people are ignorant and frivo- 
lous, we ought to go amongst them and lead 
them to the higher life. tk I know not how it 
is," said cfrie in a dull circle to a more gifted 
friend who entered it occasionally, u when 
we are left to ourselves we are all lamentably 
stupid, but whenever you are kind enough to 
come amongst us we all talk very much bet- 
ter, and of things that are w^ell worth talking 
about." The gifted man is always welcome, 
if only he will stoop to conquer, and forge', 
himself to give light and heat to others. The 
low Philistinism of many a provincial town is 
due mainly to the shy reserve of the one or 
two superior men who fancy that they cannot 
amalgamate with the common intellect of 
the place. 
2$ 



402 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Not only would I advocate a little patient 
condescension, but even something of the 
sturdier temper which will not be driven out. 
Are the Philistines to have all the talk to 
themselves forever; are they to rehearse 
their stupid old platitudes without the least 
fear of contradiction? How long, O Lord? 
how long? Let us resolve that even in gen- 
eral society they shall not eternally have 
things their own way. Somebody ought to 
have the courage to enlighten them even at 
their own tables, and in the protecting pres- 
ence of their admiring wives and daughters. 



LETTER VI. 

TO A FRIEND WHO KINDLY WARNED THE AU- 
THOR OF THE BAD EFFECTS OF SOLITUDE. 

Vce so Us— Society and solitude alike necessary— The use of 
each — In solitude we know ourselves — M^itaigne as a 
book-buyer— Compensations of solitude— Description of 
one who loved and sought it — How men are driven into 
solitude — Cultivated people in the provinces — Use of soli- 
tude as a protection for rare and delicate natures — Shel- 
ley's dislike to general society— Wordsworth and Turner 
— Sir Isaac Newton's repugnance to society — Auguste 
Comte — His systematic isolation and unshakable firmness 
of purpose— Milton and Bunyan— The solitude which is 
really injurious— Painters and authors— An ideal divis- 
ion of life. 

You cry to me Vce solis ! and the cry seems 
not the less loud and stirring that it comes in 
the folds of a letter. Just at iirst it quite 
startled and alarmed me, and made me 
strangely dissatisfied with my life and work ; 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 403 

but farther reflection has been gradually rec- 
onciling me ever since, and now I feel cheer- 
ful again, and in a humor to answer you. 

Woe unto him that is alone ! This has been 
often said, but the studious recluse may an- 
swer, Woe unto him that is never alone and 
cannot bear to be alone ! 

We need society, and we need solitude also, 
as we need summer and winter, day and 
night, exercise and rest. I thank heaven for 
a thousand pleasant and profitable conversa- 
tions with acquaintances and friends ; I thank 
heaven also, and not less gratefully, for thou- 
sands of sweet hours that have passed in sol- 
itary thought or labor, under the silent 
stars. 

Society is necessary to give us our share 
and place in the collective life of humanity, 
but solitude is necessary to the maintenance 
of the individual life. Society is to the indi- 
vidual wljat travel and commerce are to a 
nation; whilst solitude represents the home 
life of the nation, during which it develops its 
especial originality and genius. 

The life of the perfect hermit, and that of 
those persons who feel themselves nothing in- 
dividually, and have no existence but what 
they receive from others, are alike imperfect 
lives. The perfect life is like that of a ship of 
war which has its own place in the fleet and 
can share in its strength and discipline, but 
can also go forth alone in the solitude of the 
infinite sea. We ought to belong to Society, 
to have our place in it, and yet to be capable 



404 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of a complete individual existence outride of 
it. 

Which of the two is the grander, the ship 
in the disciplined fleet, arranged in order of 
battle, or the ship alone in the tempest, a 
thousand miles from land? The truest grand- 
eur of the ship is neither in one nor the other, 
but in the capacity for both. What would 
that captain merit who either had not seaman- 
ship enough to work under the eye of the ad- 
miral, or else had not sufficient knowledge of 
navigation to be trusted out of the range of 
signals? 

I value society for the abundance of ideas 
that it brings before us, like carriages in a fre- 
quented street; but I value solitude for sin- 
cerity and peace, and for the better under- 
standing of the thoughts that are truly ours. 
Only in solitude do we learn our inmost nature 
and its needs. He who has lived for some 
great space of existence apart from the tumult 
of the world, has discovered the vanity of the 
things for which he has no natural aptitude 
or gift — their relative vanity, I mean, their 
uselessness to himself, personally ; and at the 
same time he has learned what is truly pre- 
cious and good for him. Surely this is knowl- 
edge of inestimable value to a man : surely it 
is a great thing for any one in the bewildering 
confusion of distracting toils and pleasures to 
have found out the labor that he is most fit 
for and the pleasures that satisfy him best. 
Society so encourages us in affectations that 
it scarcely leaves us a chance of knowing our 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 405 

own minds; but in solitude this knowledge 
comes of itself, and delivers us from innu- 
merable vanities. 

Montaigne tells us that at one time he bought 
books from ostentation, but that afterwards 
he bought only such books as he wanted for 
his private reading. In the first of these con- 
ditions of mind we may observe the influence 
of society ; in the Second the effect of solitude. 
The man of the world does not consult his own 
intellectual needs, but considers the eyes of 
his visitors; the solitary student takes bis lit- 
erature as a lonely traveller takes food when 
he is hungry, without reference to the ordered 
courses of public hospitality 

It is a traditional habit of mankind to see 
only the disadvantages of solitude, without 
considering its compensations ; but there are 
great compensations, some of the greatest 
being negative. The lonely man is lord of his 
own hours and of his own purse ; his days are 
long and unbroken, he escapes from every 
form of ostentation, and may live quite simply 
and sincerely in great calm breadths of leisure. 
I knew one who passed his summers in the 
heart of a vast forest, in a common thatched 
cottage with furniture of common deal, and 
for this retreat he quitted very gladly a rich 
fine house in the city. He wore nothing but 
old clothes, read only a few old books, with- 
out the least regard to the opinions of the 
learned, and did not take in a newspaper. 
On the wall of his habitation he inscribed with 
a piece of charcoal a quotation from De Sen* 



406 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ancour to this effect: "In the world a man 
lives in his own age; in solitude, in all the 
ages. 1 ' I observed in him the effects of a 
lonely life, and he greatly aided my observa- 
tions by frankly communicating his experi- 
ences. That solitude had become inexpres- 
sibly dear to him, but he admitted one evil 
consequence of it, which was an increasing un- 
fitness for ordinary society, though he cher- 
ished a few tried friendships, and was grate- 
ful to those who loved him and could enter 
into his humor. He had acquired a horror of 
towns and crowds, not from nervousness, but 
because he felt imprisoned and impeded in his 
thinking, which needed the depths of the 
forest, the venerable trees, the communica- 
tion with primaeval nature, from which he 
drew a mysterious yet necessary nourishment 
for the peculiar activity of his mind. I found 
that his case answered very exactly to the 
sentence he quoted from De Senancour; he 
lived less in his own age than others do, but 
he had a fine compensation in a strangely 
vivid understanding of other ages. Like De 
Senancour, he had a strong sense of the tran- 
sitoriness of what is transitory, and a passion- 
ate preference for all that the human mind 
conceives to be relatively or absolutely per- 
manent. This trait was very observable in 
his talk about the peoples of antiquity, and in 
the delight he took in dwelling rather upon 
everything which they had in common with 
ourselves than on those differences which are 
more obvious to the modern spirit. His 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 407 

temper was grave and earnest, but unfailingly 
cheerful, and entirely free from any tendency 
to bitterness. The habits of his life would have 
been most unfavorable to the development of a 
man of business, of a statesman, of a leader in 
practical enterprise, but they were certainly 
not unfavorable to the growth of a tranquil 
and comprehensive intellect, capable of " just 
judgment and high-hearted patriotism. '» He 
had not the spirit of the newspapers, he did 
not live intensely in the present, but he had 
the spirit which has animated great poets, 
and saints, and sages, and far-seeing teachers 
of humanity. Not in vain had he lived alone 
with Nature, not in vain had he watched in 
solemn twilights and witnessed many a dawn. 
There is, there is a strength that comes to us 
in solitude from that shadowy, awful Presence 
that friv olous crow^ds repel ! 

Solitude may be and is sometimes deliber- 
ately accepted or chosen, but far more fre- 
quently men are driven into it by Nature and 
by Fate. They go into solitude to escape the 
sense of isolation which is always most intol- 
erable when there are many voices round us 
in loud dissonance with our sincerest thought. 
It is a great error to encourage in young peo- 
ple the love of noble culture in the hope that 
it may lead them more into what is called 
good society. High culture always isolates, 
always drives men out of their class and 
makes it more difficult for them to share 
naturally and easily the common class-life 
around them. They seek the few companions 



408 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

who can understand them, and when these 
are not to he had within any traversable dis- 
tance, they sit and work alone. Very possi- 
bly too, in some instances, a superior culture 
may compel the possessor of it to hold opin- 
ions too far in advance of the opinions preva- 
lent around him to be patiently listened to or 
tolerated, and then he must either disguise 
them, which is always highly distasteful to a 
man of honor, or else submit to be treated as 
an enemy to human welfare. Cultivated 
people who live in London (their true home) 
need never condemn themselves to solitude 
from this cause, but in the provinces there 
are many places where it is not easy for them 
to live sociably without a degree of reserve 
that is more wearisome than solitude itself. 
And however much pains you take to keep 
your culture well in the background, it al- 
ways makes you rather an object of suspicion 
to people who have no culture. They per- 
ceive that you are reserved, they know that 
very much of what passes in your mind is a 
mystery to them, and this feeling makes them 
uneasy in your presence, even afraid of you, 
and not indisposed to find a compensation for 
this uncomfortable feeling in sarcasms behind 
your back. Unless you are gifted with a 
truly extraordinary power of conciliating 
goodwill, you are not likely to get on happily, 
for long together, with people who feel them- 
selves your inferiors. The very utmost skill 
and caution will hardly avail to hide all your 
modes of thought. Something of your highe? 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. M) 

philosophy will escape in an unguarded mo- 
ment, and give offence because it will seem 
foolish or incomprehensible to your audience. 
There is no safety for you but in a timely 
withdrawal, either to a society that is pre- 
pared to understand you, or else to a solitude 
where your intellectual superiorities will 
neither be a cause of irritation to others nor 
of vexation to yourself. 

Like all our instincts, the instinct of soli- 
tude has its especial purpose, which appears 
to be the protection of rare and delicate na- 
tures from the commonplace world around 
them. Though recluses are considered by 
men of the world to be doomed to inevitable 
incompetence, the fact is that many of them 
have reached the highest distinction in intel- 
lectual pursuits. If Shelley had not disliked 
general society as he did, the originality of 
his own living and thinking would have been 
less complete ; the influences of mediocre peo- 
ple, who, of course, are always in the major- 
ity, would have silently but surely operated 
to the destruction of that unequalled and per- 
sonal delicacy of imagination to which we 
owe what is inimitable in his poetry. In the 
last year of his life, he said to Trelawny of 
Mary, his second wife, "She can't bear soli- 
tude, nor I society — the quick coupled with 
the dead." Here is a piteous prayer of his to 
be delivered from a party that he dreaded: 
"Mary says she will have a party! There 
are English singers here, the Sinclairs, and 
she will ask them, and every one she or you 



410 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

know. Oh the horror ! For pity go to Mary 
and intercede for me ! I will submit to any 
other species of torture than that of being 
bored to death by idle ladies and gentlemen.'' 
Again, he writes to Mary : ' ' My greatest de- 
light would be utterly to desert all human so- 
ciety. I would retire with you and our child 
to a solitary island in the sea ; would build a 
boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates 
of the world. I would read no reviews and 
talk with no authors. If I dared trust my 
imagination it would tell me that there are 
one or two chosen companions beside your- 
self whom I should desire. But to this I 
would not listen; where two or three are 
gathered together, the devil is among them." 
At Marlow he knew little of his neighbors. 
"I am not wretch enough,' 1 he said, " to tol- 
erate an acquaintance." Wordsworth and 
Turner, if less systematic in their isolation, 
were still solitary workers, and much of the 
peculiar force and originality of their per- 
formance is due to their independence of the 
people about them. Painters are especial suf- 
ferers from the visits of talkative people who 
know little or nothing of the art they talk 
about, and yet who have quite influence 
enough to disturb the painter's mind by prov- 
ing to him that his noblest thoughts are surest 
to be misunderstood. Men of science, too, find 
solitude favorable to their peculiar work, be- 
cause it permits the concentration of their 
powers during long periods of time. Newton 
had a great repugnance to society, and even 



SOCIETY AXD SOLITUDE. 411 

to notoriety — a feeling which is different, and 
in men of genius more rare. No one can 
doubt, however, that Newton's great intel- 
lectual achievements were due in some meas- 
ure to this peculiarity of his temper, which 
permitted him to ripen them in the sustained 
tranquillity necessary to difficult investiga- 
tions. Auguste Comte isolated himself not 
only from preference but on system, and 
whatever may have been the defects of his 
remarkable mind, and the weakness of its 
ultimate decay, it is certain that his amazing 
command over vast masses of heterogeneous 
material would have been incompatible with 
any participation in the passing interests of 
the world. Nothing in intellectual history 
has ever exceeded the unshakable firmness 
of purpose with which he dedicated his whole 
being to the elaboration of the Positive phi- 
losophy. He sacrificed everything to it — 
position, time, health, and all the amuse- 
ments and opportunities of society. He 
found that commonplace acquaintances dis- 
turbed his work and interfered with his mas- 
tery of it, so he resolutely renounced them. 
Others have done great things in isolation 
that was not of their own choosing, yet none 
the less fruitful for them and for mankind. 
It was not when Milton saw most of the 
world, but in the forced retirement of a man 
who had lost health and eyesight, and whose 
party was hopelessly defeated, that he com- 
posed the "Paradise Lost." It was during 
tedious years of imprisonment that Bunyan 



412 THE INTELLECTUAL LIEE. 

wrote his immortal allegory. Many a genius 
has owed his best opportunities to poverty, 
because poverty had happily excluded him 
from society, and so preserved him from 
time-devouring exigencies and frivolities. 

The solitude which is really injurious is the 
severance from all who are capable of under- 
standing us. Painters say that they cannot 
work effectively for very long together when 
separated from the society of artists, and 
that they must return to London, or Paris, 
or Rome, to avoid an oppressive feeling of 
discouragement which paralyzes their pro- 
ductive energy. Authors are more fortu- 
nate, because all cultivated people are society 
for them; yet even authors lose strength 
and agility of thought when too long de- 
prived of a genial intellectual atmosphere. 
In the country you meet with cultivated in- 
dividuals; but we need more than this, we 
need those general conversations in which 
every speaker is worth listening to. The life 
most favorable to culture would have its 
times of open and equal intercourse with the 
best rrinds, and also its periods of retreat. 
My ideal would be a house in London, not far 
from one or two houses that are so full of 
light and warmth that it is a liberal educa- 
tion to have entered them, and a solitary 
tower on some island of the Hebrides, with 
no companions but the sea-gulls and the 
thundering surges of the Atlantic. One such 
island I know well, and it is before my mind's 
eye, clear as a picture, whilst I am writing. 



SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 413 

It stands in the very entrance of a fine salt- 
water loch, rising above two hundred feet 
out of the water and setting its granite front 
steep against the western ocean. When the 
evenings are clear you can see Staff a and 
Iona like blue clouds between you and the 
sunset ; and on your left, close at hand, the 
granite hills of Mull, with Ulva to the right 
across the narrow strait. It was the dream 
of my youth to build a tower there, with 
three or four little rooms in it, and walls as 
strong as a lighthouse. There have been 
more foolish dreams, and there have been 
less competent teachers than the tempests 
that would have roused me and the calms 
that would have brought me peace. If any 
serious thought, if any noble inspiration 
might have been hoped for, surely it would 
have been there, where only the clouds and 
waves were transient, but the ocean before 
me, and the stars above, and the mountains 
on either hand, were emblems and evidences 
of eternity. 

Note. — There is a passage in Scott's novel, " The Pirate, " 
which illustrates what has been said in this letter about the 
necessity for concealing superior culture in the presence of 
less intellectual companions, and I quote it the more willing- 
ly that Scott was so remarkably free from any morbid aver- 
sion to society, and so capable of taking a sincere interest in 
every human being. 

Cleveland is speaking to Minna : — 

"I thought over my former story, and saw that seeming 
more brave, skilful, and enterprising than others had gained 
me command and respect, and that seeming more gently- 
nurtured and more civilized than they had made them envy 
and hate me as a being of another species. I bargained with 



414 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

myself then, that since 1 could not lay aside my superiority 
of intellect and education, 1 would do my best to disguise, 
and to sink, in the rude seaman, all appearance of better 
feeling and better accomplishments. " 

A similar policy is often quite as necessary in the society ot 
landsmen. 



PART X. 

INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 



LETTER I. 



TO A YOUNG AUTHOR WHILST HE WAS WRITING 
HIS FIRST BOOK. 

Mr. Galton's advice to young travellers — That we ought to 
interest ourselves in the r p ro 9 ress of a journey — The 
same rule applicable in intellectual things — Women in the 
cabin of a canal boat — Working hastily for temporary 
purposes— Fevered eagerness to get work done— Begin- 
ners have rarely acquired firm intellectual habits — Know- 
ing the range of our own powers — The coolness of accom- 
plished artists— Advice given by Ingres— Balzac's method 
of work— Scott, Horace Vernet, John Phillip— Decided 
workers are deliberate workers. 

I read the other day, in Galton's "Art of 
Travel," a little bit which concerns you and 
all of us, but I made the extract in my com- 
monplace-book for yoifr benefit rather than 
my own, because the truth it contains has 
been "borne in upon me " by my own experi- 
ence, so that what Mr. Gait on says did not 
give me a new conviction, but only confirmed 
me in an old one. He is speaking to explor- 
ers who have not done so much in that way 
as he has himself, and though the subject of his 



416 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

advice is the conduct of an exploring party 
(in the wilds of Australia, for example) the 
advice itself is equally useful if taken meta- 
phorically, and applied to the conduct of in- 
tellectual labors and explorations of all kinds. 

"Interest yourself," says Mr. Galton, 
" chiefly in the progress of your journey, and 
do not look forward to its end with eagerness. 
It is better to think of a return to civilization, 
not as an end to hardship and a haven from 
ill, but as a thing to be regretted, and as a 
close to an adventurous and pleasant life. 
In this way, risking less, you will insensibly 
creep on, making connections, and learning 
the capabilities of the country as you ad- 
vance, which will be found invaluable in the 
case of a hurried or a disastrous return. And 
thus, when some months have passed by, you 
will look back with surprise on the great dis- 
tance travelled over ; for if you average only 
three miles a day, at the end of the year you 
will have advanced 1000, which is a very 
considerable exploration. The fable of the 
hare and the tortoise seems expressly in- 
tended for travellers over wide and unknown 
tracts." 

Yes, we ought to interest ourselves chiefly 
in the progress of our work, and not to look 
forward to its end with eagerness. That 
eagerness of which Mr. Galton speaks has 
spoiled many a piece of work besides a geo- 
graphical exploration, and it not only spoils 
work, but it does worse, it spoils life also. 
How am I to enjoy this year as I ought, if I 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 417 

am continually wishing it were over? A tru- 
ly intellectual philosophy must begin by rec- 
ognizing the fact that the intellectual paths are 
infinitely long, that there will always be new 
horizons behind the hoi izon that is before us, 
and that we must accept a gradual advance as 
the law of our intellectual life. It is our busi- 
ness to move forwards, but we ought to do so 
without any greater feeling of hurry than that 
which affects the most stationary of minds. 
Not a bad example for us is a bargeman's 
wife in a canal-boat. She moves ; movement 
is the law of her life ; yet see is as tranquil in 
her little cabin as any goodwife on shore, 
brewing her tea and preparing her buttered 
toast without ever thinking about getting to 
the end of her journey. For if that voyage 
were ended, another would always succeed to 
it, and another ! In striking contrast to the 
unhurried bargeman's wife in her cabin is an 
irritable Frenchman in the corner of a dili- 
gence, looking at his watch every half -hour, 
and wishing that the dust and rattle were 
over, and he were in his own easy-chair at 
home. Those who really lead the intellectual 
life, and have embraced it for better and for 
worse, are like the bargeman's wife; but 
those who live the life from time to time only, 
for some special purpose, wishing to be rid of 
it as soon as that purpose is accomplished, 
are like the sufferer in the purgatory of the 
diligence. Is there indeed really any true in- 
tellectual life at all when every hour of labor 
is spoiled by a feverish eagerness to be at the 
27 



418 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

end of the projected taskf You cannot take 
a bit out of another man's life and live it, 
without having lived the previous years that 
led up to it, without having also the assured 
hopes for the years that lie beyond. The at- 
tempt is constantly made by amateurs of all 
kinds, and by men of temporary purposes, 
and it always fails. The amateur says when 
he awakes on some fine summer morning, 
and draws up his blind, and looks out on the 
dewy fields: "Ah, the world of nature is 
beautiful to-day : what if I were to lead the 
life of an artist?" And after breakfast he 
seeks up his old box of watercolor and his 
blockbook, and stool, and white umbrella, 
and what not, and sallies forth, and fixes him- 
self on the edge of the forest or the banks of 
the amber stream. The day that he passes 
there looks like an artist's day, yet it is not. 
It has not been preceded by the three or four 
thousand days which ought to have led up to 
it; it is not strong in the assured sense of 
present skill, in the calm knowledge that the 
hours will bear good fruit. So the chances 
are that there will be some hurry, and fret- 
fulness, and impatience, under the shadow of 
that white parasol, and also that when the 
day is over there will be a disappointment. 
You cannot put an artist's day into the life of 
any one but an artist. 

Our impatiences come mainly, I think, 
from an amateurish doubt about our own 
capacity, which is accompanied by a fevered 
eagerness to see the work done, because we 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 419 

are tormented both by hopes and fears so 
long as it is in progress. We have fears that 
it may not turn out as it ought to do, and we 
have at the same time hopes for its success. 
Both these causes produce eagerness, and 
deprive us of the tranquillity which distin- 
guishes the thorough workman, and which is 
necessary to thoroughness in the work itself. 
Now please observe that I am not advising 
you to set aside these hopes and fears by an 
effort of the will ; when you have them they 
are the inevitable result of your state of cult- 
ure, and the will can no more get rid of them 
than it can get rid of an organic disease. 
When you have a limited amount of power 
and of culture, and are not quite clear in your 
own mind as to where the limits lie, it is 
natural on the one hand that you should fear 
the insufficiency of what you possess, and on 
the other that in more sanguine moments 
you should indulge in hopes which are 
only extravagant because your powers have 
not yet been accurately measured. You will 
alternate between fear and hope, accord- 
ing to the temporary predominance of sad- 
dening or cheerful ideas, but both these feel- 
ings will urge you to complete the work in 
hand, that you may. see your own powers 
reflected in it, and measure them more ex- 
actly. This is the main cause of the eager- 
ness of young authors, and the reason why 
they often launch work upon the sea of pub- 
licity which is sure to go immediately to the 
bottom, from the unworkmanlike haste with 



420 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

which it has been put together. But beyond 
this there is another cause, which is, that 
beginners in literature have rarely acquired 
firm intellectual habits, that they do not yet 
lead the tranquil intellectual life, so that such 
a piece of work as the composition of a book 
keeps them in an unwholesome state of ex- 
citement. When you feel this coming upon 
you, pray remember Mr. Galton's wise trav- 
eller in unknown tracts, or the bargeman's 
wife in the canal- boat. 

Amongst the many advantages of experi- 
ence, one of the most valuable is that we 
come to know the range of our own powers, 
and if we are wise we keep contentedly with- 
in them. This relieves us from the malady 
of eagerness ; we know pretty accurately be- 
forehand what our work will be when it is 
done, and therefore we are not in a hurry to 
see it accomplished. The coolness of old 
hands in all departments of labor is due in 
part to the cooling of the temperament by 
age, but it is due even more to the fulness of 
acquired experience, for we do not find 
middle-aged men so cool in situations where 
they feel themselves incompetent. The con- 
duct of the most experienced painters in the 
management of their work is a good example 
of this masterly coolness, because we can see 
them painting in their studios whereas we 
cannot so easily see or so justly estimate the 
coolness of scientific or literary workmen. A 
painter of great experience will have, usually, 
several pictures at a time upon his easels, 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 421 

and pass an hour upon one, or an hour upon 
the other, simple as the state of the pigment 
invites him without ever being tempted to 
risk anything by hurrying a process. The 
ugly preparatory daubing which irritates the 
impatience of the beginner does not dis- 
turb h is equanimity ; he has laid it with a 
view to the long-foreseen result, and it satis- 
fies him temporarily as the right thing for 
the time being. If you know what is the 
right thing for the time being, and always do 
it, you are sure of the calm of the thorough 
workman. All his touches, except the very 
last touch on each work, are touches of prep- 
aration, leading gradually up to his result. 
Ingres used to counsel his pupils to sketch 
always, to sketch upon and within the first 
sketch till the picture came right in the end ; 
and this was strictly Balzac's method in lit- 
erature. The literary and artistic labors of 
these two men did not proceed so much 
upon the principle of travelling as upon that 
of cultivation. They took an idea in the 
rough, as a settler takes a tract from wild na- 
ture, and then they went over it repeatedly, 
each time pushing the cultivation of it a little 
farther. Scott, Horace Vernet, John Phillip, 
and many others, have worked rather on the 
principle of travelling, passing over the 
ground once, and leaving it, never coming 
back again to correct the mistakes of yester- 
day. Both methods of work require delibera- 
tion, but the latter needs it in the supreme 
degree. All very decided workers, men who 



422 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

did not correct, have been at the same time 
very deliberate workers — rapid, in the sense 
of accomplishing much in the course of the 
year, or the life, but cautious and slow and 
observant whilst they actually labored, think- 
ing out very carefully every sentence before 
they wrote it, every touch of paint before 
they laid it. 



LETTER II. 

TO A STUDENT IN THE FIRST ARDOR OP INTEL- 
LECTUAL AMBITION. 

The first freshness—Why should it not be preserved?— The 
dulness of the intellectual— Fictions and false promises— 
Ennui in work itself — Durer's engraving of Melancholy- 
Scott about Dryden — Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth — Hum- 
boldt, Cuvier, Goethe— Tennyson's ''Maud "—Preventives 
of ennui— Hard study for limited times— The ennui of 
jaded faculties. 

I have been thinking about you frequently 
of late, and the burden or refrain of my 
thoughts has been "What a blessing he has 
in that first freshness, if only he could keep 
it ! " But now I am beginning niore hopeful- 
ly to ask myself, "Why should he not keep 
it?" 

It would be an experiment worth trying, 
so to order your intellectual life, that how- 
ever stony and thorny your path might be, 
however difficult and arduous, it should at 
all events never be dull ; or, to express what 
I mean more accurately, that you yourself 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 423 

should never feel the depressing influences of 
dulness during the years when they are most 
to be dreaded. I want you to live steadily 
and happily in your intellectual labors, even 
to the natural close of existence, and my best 
wish for you is that you may escape a long 
and miserable malady which brain-workers 
very co?:amonly suffer from when the first 
dreams of youth have been disappointed — a 
malady in which the intellectual desires are 
feeble, the intellectual hopes are few; whose 
victim, if he has still resolution enough to 
learn anything, acquires without satisfaction, 
and, if he has courage to create, has neither 
pride nor pleasure in his creations. 

If I were to sing the praises of knowledge 
as they have been so often sung by louder 
harps than mine, I might avoid so dreary a 
theme. It is easy to pretend to believe that 
the intellectual life is always sure to be inter- 
esting and delightful, but the truth is that, 
either from an unwise arrangement of their 
work, or from mental or physical causes 
which we will investigate to some extent be- 
fore we have done with the subject, many 
men whose occupations are reputed to be 
amongst the most interesting have suffered 
terribly from emiui, and that not during a 
week or two at a time, but for consecutive 
years and years. 

There is a class of books written with the 
praiseworthy intention of stimulating young 
men to intellectual labor, in which this dan- 
ger of the intellectual life is systematically 



424 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ignored. It is assumed in these books that 
the satisfactions of intellectual labor are cer- 
tain; that although it may not always, or 
often, result in outward and material pros- 
perity, its inward joys will ne 7er fail. Prom- 
ises of this kind cannot safely be made to any 
one. The satisfactions of intellectual riches 
are not more sure than the satisfactions of 
material riches; the feeling of dull indiffer- 
ence which often so mysteriously clouds the 
life of the rich man in the midst of the most 
elaborate contrivances for his pleasure and 
amusement, has its exact counterpart in the 
lives of men w*io are rich in the best treas- 
ures of the mind, and who have infinite intel- 
lectual resources. However brilliant your 
ability, however brave and persistent your 
industry, however vast your knowledge, 
there is always this dreadful possibility of en- 
nui. People tell you that work is a specific 
against it, but many a man has worked 
steadily and earnestly, and suffered terribly 
from ennui all the time that he was working, 
although the labor was of his own choice, the 
labor that he loved best, and for which Na- 
ture evidently intended him. The poets, from 
Solomon downwards, have all of them, so far 
as I know, given utterance in one page or an- 
other of their writings to this feeling of 
dreary dissatisfaction, and Albert Durer, in 
his " Melencolia, " illustrated it. It is plain 
that the robust female figure which has exer- 
cised the ingenuity of so many commentators 
is not melancholy either from weakness of 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 425 

the body or vacancy of the mind. She is 
strong and she is learned; yet, though the 
plumes of her wings are mighty, she sits 
heavily and listlessly, brooding amidst the 
implements of suspended labor, on the shore 
of a waveless sea. The truth is that Diirer 
engraved the melancholy that he himself only 
too intimately knew. This is not the dulness 
of the ignorant and incapable, whose minds 
are a blank because they have no ideas, whose 
hands are listless for want of an occupation ; 
it is the sadness of the most learned, the most 
intelligent, the most industrious; the weary 
misery of those who are rich in the attain- 
ments of culture, who have the keys of the 
chambers of knowledge, and wings to bear 
them to the heaven of the ideal. If you coun- 
sel this "Melencolia" to work that she may 
be merry, she will answer that she knows 
the uses of labor and its vanity, and the pre- 
cise amount of profit that a man hath of all 
his labor which he taketh under the sun. All 
things are full of labor, she will tell you; and 
in much wisdom is much grief, and he that 
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. 

Can we escape this brooding melancholy of 
the great workers — has any truly intellectual 
person escaped it ever? The question can 
never be answered with perfect certainty, be- 
cause we can never quite accurately know 
the whole truth about the life of another. I 
have known several men of action, almost 
entirely devoid of intellectual culture, whc 
enjoyed an unbroken flow of animal energy 



420 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and were clearly free from, the melancholy of 
Dlirer ; but I never intimately knew a really 
cultivated person who had not suffered from 
it more or less, and the greatest sufferers 
were the most conscientious thinkers and 
students. Amongst the illustrious dead, it 
may be very safely answered that any poet 
who has described it has written from his 
own experience — a transient experience it 
may be, yet his own. When Walter Scott, 
a-propos of Dry den, spoke of u the appar- 
ently causeless fluctuation of spirits incident 
to one doomed to labor incessantly in the 
feverish exercise of the imagination," and of 
that "sinking of spirit which follows violent 
mental exertion," is it not evident that his 
kindly understanding of Dryden's case came 
from the sympathy of a fellow-laborer who 
knew by his own experience the gloomier and 
more depressing passages of the imaginative 
life? It would be prudent perhaps to omit 
the mention of Byron, because some may at- 
tribute his sadness to his immorality ; and if I 
spoke of Shelley, they might answer that he 
was "sad because he was impious;" but the 
truth is, that quite independently of conduct, 
and even of belief, it was scarcely possible 
for natures so highly imaginative as these 
two, and so ethereally intellectual as one of 
the two, to escape those clouds of gloom 
which darken the intellectual life. Words- 
worth was not immoral, Wordsworth was 
not unorthodox, yet he could be as sad in his 
own sober way as Byron in the - bitterness of 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 127 

his desolation, or Shelley in his tenderest 
wailing. The three men who seem to have 
been the least subject to the sadness of intel- 
lectual workers were Alexander Humboldt, 
Cuvier, and Goethe. Alexander Humboldt, 
so far as is known to us, lived always in a 
clear and cheerful daylight ; his appetite for 
learning was both strong and regular ; he em- 
braced the intellectual life in his earliest man- 
hood, and lived in it with an unhesitating 
singleness of purpose, to the limits of extreme 
old age. Cuvier was to the last a model stu- 
dent, of a temper at once most unflinching 
and most kind, happy in all his studies, hap- 
pier still in his unequalled facility of mental 
self -direction. Goethe, as all know, lived a 
life of unflagging interest in each of the three 
great branches of intellectual labor. During 
the whole of his long life he was interested in 
literature, in which he was a master : he was 
interested in science, in which he was a dis- 
coverer, and in art, of which he was an ar- 
dent though not practically successful stu- 
dent. His intellectual activity ceased only 
on rare occasions of painful illness or over- 
whelming affliction; he does not seem to 
have asked himself ever whether knowledge 
was worth its cost ; he was always ready to 
pay the appointed price of toil. He had no 
infirmity of intellectual doubt ; the powerful 
impulses from within assured him that knowl- 
edge was good for him, and he went to it 
urged by an unerring instinct, as a young 
salmon bred in the slime of a river seek? 



428 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

strength in the infinite sea. And yet, being 
a poet and a man of strong passions, Goethe 
did not altogether escape the green-sickness 
which afflicts the imaginative temperament, 
or he could never have written u Werther;" 
but he cured himself very soon, and the au- 
thor of "Werther" had no indulgence for 
Wertherism — indeed we are told that he 
grew ashamed of having written the book 
which inoculated the younger minds of Eu- 
rope with that miserable disease. In our 
own time an illustrious poet has given in 
"Maud" a very perfect study of a young 
mind in a morbid condition, a mind having 
indeed the student-temper, but of a bad kind, 
that which comes not from the genuine love 
of study, but from sulky rage against the 
world. 

" Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man 
be the worse. 
I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil may pipe to his 
own." 

This kind of self -burial in one's library -does 
not come from the love of literature. The 
recluse will not speak to his neighbor, yet 
needs human intercourse of some kind, and 
seeks it in reading, urged by an inward 
necessity. He feels no gratitude towards the 
winners of knowledge ; his morbid ill-nature 
depreciates the intellectual laborers : — 

*' The man of science himself is fonder of glory and vain; 
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor." 

What is the life such a spirit will choose 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENIC 'b. 429 

for itself? Despising alike the ignorant and 
the learned, the acuteness of the cultivated 
and the simplicity of the poor, in what form 
of activity or inaction will he seek what all 
men need, the harmony of a life well tuned? 

" Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways; 
Where, if I cannot be gay, let a passionless peace be my lot. ' ' 

There are many different morbid states of 
the mind, and this of the hero of " Maud " is 
only one of them, but it is the commonest 
amongst intellectual or semi-intellectual 
young men. See how he has a little fit of 
momentary enthusiasm (all he is capable of) 
about a shell that suddenly and accidentally 
attracts his attention. How true to the mor- 
bid nature is that incident ! Unable to pur- 
sue any large and systematic observation, the 
diseased mind is attracted to things suddenly 
and accidentally, sees them out of all propor- 
tion, and then falls into the inevitable fit of 
scornful peevishness. 

" What is it? A learned man w 

Could give it a clumsy name: 
Let him name it who can." * 

The question which concerns the world is, 
how this condition of the mind may be 
avoided. The cure Mr. Tennyson suggested 
was war; but wars, though more frequent 
than is desirable, are not to be had always. 
And in your case, my friend, it is happily 
not a cure but a preventive that is needed. 
Let me recommend certain precautions which 
taken together are likely to keep you safe. 



430 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Care for the physical health in the first place T 
for if there is a morbid mind the bodily organs 
are not doing their work as they ought to do. 
Next, for the mind itself, I would heartily 
recommend hard study, really hard study, 
taken very regularly but in very moderate 
quantity. The effect of it on the mind is as 
bracing as that of cold water on the body, 
but as you ought not to remain too long in 
the cold bath, so it is dangerous to study hard 
more than a short time every day. Do some 
work that is very difficult (such as reading 
some language that you have to puzzle out a 
coups de dictionnaire) two hours a day regu- 
larly, to brace the fighting power of the in- 
tellect, but let the rest of the day's work be 
easier. Acquire especially, if you possibly 
can, the enviable faculty of getting entirely 
rid of your work in the intervals of it, and of 
taking a hearty interest in common things, 
in a garden, or stable, or dog-kennel, or 
farm. If the work pursues you — if what is 
called unconscious cerebration, which ought 
to go forward without your knowing it, be- 
comes conscious cerebration, and bothers 
you, then you have been working beyond 
your cerebral strength, and you are not safe. 
An organization which was intended by 
Nature for the intellectual life cannot be 
healthy and happy without a certain degree 
of intellectual activity. Natures like those of 
Humboldt and Goethe need immense labors 
for their own felicity, smaller powers need less 
extensive labor. To all of us who have intel- 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 431 

lectual needs there is a certain supply of work 
necessary to perfect health. If we do less, we 
are in danger of that ennui which comes from 
want of intellectual exercise ; if we do more, 
we may suffer from that other ennui which is 
due to the weariness of the jaded faculties, 
and this is the more terrible of the two. 



LETTER III. 

TO AN INTELLECTUAL MAN WHO DESIRED AN 
OUTLET FOR HIS ENERGIES. 

Dissatisfaction of the intellectual when they have not an ex- 
tensive influence — A consideration suggested to the author 
by Mr. Matthew Arnold — Each individual mind a portion 
of the national mind, which must rise or decline with the 
minds of which it is composed — Influence of a townsman 
in his town — Household influence— Charities and conde- 
scendences of the highly cultivated — A suggestion of M. 
Taine— Conversation with inferiors— How to make it in- 
teresting—That we ought to be satisfied with humble re- 
sults and small successes. 

There is a very marked tendency amongst 
persons of culture to feel dissatisfied with 
themselves and their success in life when they 
do not exercise some direct and visible in- 
fluence over a considerable portion of the pub- 
lie. To put the case in a more concrete form, 
it may be affirmed that if an intellectual 
young man does not exercise influence by lit- 
erature, or by oratory, or by one of the most 
elevated forms of art, he is apt to think that 
his culture and intelligence are lost upon the 



432 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

world, and either to blame himself for being 
what he considers a failure, or else (and this 
is more common) to find fault with the world 
in general for not giving him a proper chance 
of making his abilities tell. The facilities for 
obtaining culture are now so many and great, 
and within the reach of so many well-to-do 
people, that hundreds of persons become really 
very clever in various ways who would have 
remained utterly uncultivated had they lived 
in any previous century. A few of these dis- 
tinguish themselves in literature and other 
pursuits which bring notoriety to the success- 
ful, but by far the greater number have to re- 
main in positions of obscurity, often being 
clearly conscious that they have abilities and 
knowledge not much, if at all, inferior to the 
abilities and knowledge of some who have 
achieved distinction. The position of a clever 
man who remains obscure is, if he has ambi- 
tion, rather trying to the moral fibre, but 
there are certain considerations which might 
help to give a direction to his energy and so 
procure him a sure relief, which reputation 
too frequently fails to provide. 

The first consideration is one which was of- 
fered to me many years ago by Mr. Matthew 
Arnold, and which I can give, though from 
memory, very nearly in his own words. The 
multiplicity of things which make claim to 
the attention of the public is in these days 
such that it requires either uncommon 
strength of will or else the force of peculiar 
circumstances to make men follow any seri- 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 433 

ous study to good result, and the great ma- 
jority content themselves with the general 
enlightenment of the epoch, which they get 
from newspapers and reviews. Hence the ef- 
forts of the intellectual produce little effect, 
and it requires either extraordinary talent or 
extraordinary fanaticism to awaken the seri- 
ous interest of any considerable number of 
readers. Yet, in spite of these discourage- 
ments, we ought to remember that our labors, 
if not applauded by others, may be of infinite 
value to ourselves, and also that beyond this 
gain to the individual, his culture is a gain to 
the nation, whether the nation formally rec- 
ognizes it or not. For the intellectual life of 
a nation is the sum of the lives of all intel- 
lectual people belonging to it, and in this sense 
your culture is a gain to England, whether 
England counts you amongst her eminent 
sons, or leaves you forever obscure. Is it 
not a noble spectacle, a spectacle well worthy 
of a highly civilized country, when a private 
citizen, with an admirable combination of 
patriotism and self-respect, says to himself as 
he labors, ' ' I know that in a country so great 
as England, where there are so many able 
men, all that I do can count for very little in 
public estimation, yet I will endeavor to store 
my mind with knowledge and make my judg- 
ment sure, in order that the national mind of 
England, of which my mind is a minute frac- 
tion, may be enlightened by so much, be it 
never so little "? I think the same noble feel- 
ing might animate a citizen with reference to 
23 



434 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

his native town; I think a good townsman 
might say to himself, "Our folks are not 
much given to the cultivation of their minds, 
and they need a few to set them an example. 
I will be one of those few. I will work and 
think, in order that our town may not get 
into a state of perfect intellectual stagnation." 
But if the nation or the city were too vast to 
call forth any noble feeling of this kind, surely 
the family is little enough and near enough. 
Might not a man say, "I will go through a 
good deal of intellectual drudgery in order 
that my wife and children may unconsciously 
get the benefit of it ; I will learn facts for them 
that they may be accurate, and get ideas for 
them that they may share with me a more 
elevated mental state; I will do something 
towards raising the tone of the whole house- 
hold"? 

The practical difficulty in all projects of 
this kind is that the household does not care 
to be intellectually elevated, and opposes the 
resistance of gravitation. The household has 
its natural intellectual level, and finds it as 
inevitably as water that is free. Cultivated 
men are surrounded in their homes by a group 
of persons, wife, children, servants, who, in 
their intercourse with one another, create the 
household tone. What is a single individual 
with his books against these combined and 
active influences? Is he to go and preach the 
gospel of the intellect in the kitchen? Will 
he venture to present intellectual conclusions 
in the drawing-room? The kitchen has a tone 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 135 

of its own which all our efforts cannot elevate, 
and the drawing-room has its own atmos- 
phere, an atmosphere unfavorable to severe 
and manly thinking. You cannot make cooks 
intellectual, and you must not be didactic 
with ladies. Intellectual men always feel 
this difficulty, and most commonly keep their 
intellect very much to themselves, when they 
are at home. If they have not an outlet else- 
where, either in society or in literature, they 
grow morbid. 

Yet, although it is useless to attempt to ele- 
vate any human being above his own intel- 
lectual level unless he gradually climbs him- 
self as a man ascends a mountain, there are 
nevertheless certain charities or condescend- 
ences of the highly cultivated which may be 
good for the lower intelligences that surround 
them, as the streams from the Alpine snows 
are good for the irrigation of the valleys, 
though the meadows w T hich fchey water must 
forever remain eigkt or ten thousand feet 
below them. And I believe that it would 
greatly add to the happiness of the intellect- 
ual portion of mankind if they could more 
systematically exercise these charities. It is 
quite clear that we can never effect by chance 
conversation that total change in the mental 
state which is gradually brought about by the 
slow processes of education ; we cannot give 
to an intellect that has never been developed, 
and which has fixed itself in the undeveloped 
state, that power and activity which come 
only after years of labor ; but we may be able 



436 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

on many occasions to offer the sort of help 
which a gentleman offers to an old woman 
when he invites her to get up into the rumble 
behind his carriage. I knew an intellectual 
lady who lived habitually in the country, and 
I may say without fanciful exaggeration that 
the farmers' wives round about her were con- 
siderably superior to what in all probability 
they would have been without the advantage 
of her kindly and instructive conversation. 
She possessed the happy art of conveying the 
sort of knowledge which could be readily re- 
ceived by her hearers, and in a maimer which 
made it agreeable to them, so that they drew 
ideas from her quite naturally, and her mind 
irrigated their minds, which would have re- 
mained permanently barren without that help 
and refreshment. It would be foolish to ex- 
aggerate the benefits of such intellectual char- 
ity as this, but it is well, on the other hand, 
not to undervalue it. Such an influence can 
never convey much solid instruction, but it 
may convey some of its results. It may 
produce a more thoughtful and reasonable 
condition of mind, it may preserve the igno- 
rant from some of those preposterous theories 
and beliefs which so easily gain currency 
amongst them. Indirectly, it may have 
rather an important political influence, by 
disposing people to vote for the better sort of 
candidate. And the influence of such intel- 
lectual charity on the material well being of 
the humbler classes, on their health and 
wealth, may be quite as considerable as that 



INTELLECTUAL UrOlENICS. 43S 

of the other and more common sort of charity 
which passes silver from hand to hand. 

Shortly after the termination of the great 
Franco-German conflict, M. Taine suggested 
in the Temps that subscribers to the better 
sort of journals might do a good deal for the 
enlightenment of the humbler classes by 
merely lending their newspapers in their 
neighborhood. This was a good suggestion : 
the best newspapers are an important intel- 
lectual propaganda ; they awaken an interest 
in the most various subjects, and supply not 
only information but a stimulus. The danger 
to persons of higher culture that the news- 
paper may absorb time which would else be 
devoted to more systematic study, does not 
exist in the classes for whose benefit M. Taine 
made his recommendation. The newspaper 
is their only secular reading, and without it 
they have no modern literature of any kind. 
in addition to the praiseworthy habit of lend- 
ing good newspapers, an intellectual man who 
lives in the country might adopt the practice 
of conversing with his neighbors about every- 
thing in which they could be induced to take 
an interest, giving them some notion of what 
goes on in the classes which are intellectually 
active, some idea of such discoveries and proj- 
ects as an untutored mind may partially un- 
derstand. For example, there is the great 
tunnel under the Mont Cenis, and there is the 
projected tunnel beneath the Channel, and 
there is the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez. 
A peasant can comprehend the greatness of 



438 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

these remarkable conceptions when they are 
properly explained to him, and he will often 
feel a lively gratitude for information of that 
kind. We ought to remember what a slow 
and painful operation reading is to the uned- 
ucated. Merely to read the native tongue is 
to them a labor so irksome that they are apt 
to lose the sense of a paragraph in seeking for 
that of a sentence or an expression. As they 
would rather speak than have to write, so 
they prefer hearing to reading, and tliey get 
much more good from it, because they can 
ask a question when the matter has not been 
made clear to them. 

One of the best ways of interesting and in- 
structing your intellectual inferiors is to give 
them an account of your travels. All peo- 
ple like to hear a traveller tell his own tale, 
and whilst he is telling it he may slip in a 
good deal of information about many things, 
and much sound doctrine. Accounts of for- 
eign countries, even when you have not seen 
them personally, nearly always awaken a 
lively interest, especially if you are able to 
give your hearers detailed descriptions of the 
life led by foreigners who occupy positions 
corresponding to their own. Peasants can 
be made to take an interest in astronomy 
even, though you cannot tell them anything 
about the peasants in Jupiter and Mars, and 
there is always, at starting, the great diffi- 
culty of persuading them to trust science 
about the motion and rotundity of the earth. 

A very direct form of intellectual charity 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 4S9 

is that of gratuitous teaching, both in classes 
and by public lectures, open to all comers. 
A great deal of light has in this way been 
spread abroad in cities, but in country vil- 
lages there is little encouragement to enter- 
prises of this kind, the intelligence of farm 
laborers being less awakened than that of the 
corresponding urban population. Let us re- 
member, however, that one of the very high- 
est and last achievements of the cultivated 
intellect is the art of conveying to the uncul- 
tivated, the untaught, the unprepared, the 
best and noblest knowledge which they are 
capable of assimilating. No one who, like the 
writer of these pages, has lived much in the 
country, and much amongst a densely igno- 
rant peasantry, will be likely in any plans of 
enlightenment to err far on the side of enthu- 
siastic hopefulness. The mind of a farm la- 
borer, or that of a small farmer, is almost al- 
ways sure to be a remarkably stiff soil, in 
which few intellectual conceptions can take 
root ; yet these few may make the difference 
between an existence worthy of a man, and 
one that differs from the existence of a brute 
in little beyond the possession of articulate 
language. We to whom the rich inheritance 
of intellectual humanity is so familiar as to 
have lost much of its freshness, are liable to 
underrate the value of thoughts and discov- 
eries which to us have for years seemed com- 
monplace. It is with our intellectual as with 
our material wealth ; we do not realize how 
precious some fragments of it might be to our 



440 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

poorer neighbors. The old clothes that we 
wear no longer may give comfort and confi- 
dence to a man in naked destitution; the 
truths which are so familiar to us that we 
never think about them, may raise the utterly 
ignorant to a sense of their human brother- 
hood. 

Above all, in the exercise of our intellectual 
charities, let us accustom ourselves to feel 
satisfied with humble results and small suc- 
cesses; and here let me make a confession 
which may be of some possible use to others. 
When a young man, I taught a drawing-class 
gratuitously, beginning with thirty-six pu- 
pils, who dwindled gradually to eleven, Soon 
afterwards I gave up the work from dissatis- 
faction, on account of the meagre attendance. 
This was very wrong — the eleven were worth 
the thirty-six ; and so long as one of the eleven 
remained I ought to have contentedly taught 
him. The success of a teacher is not to be 
measured by the numbers whom he immedi- 
ately influences. It is enough, it has been 
f proved to be enough in more than one remark- 
able instance, that a single living soul should 
be in unison with the soul of a master, and 
receive his thought by sympathy. The one 
disciple teaches in his turn, and the idea is 
propagated. 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. -U1 



LETTER IV. 

TO THE FRIEND OF A MAN OF HIGH CULTURE 
WHO PRODUCED NOTHING. 

Joubert— "Not yet time," or else "The time is past "—His 
weakness for production — Three classes of minds — A 
more perfect intellectual life attainable by the silent stu- 
dent than by authors — He may follow his own genius- 
Saving of time effected by abstinence from writing— The 
unproductive may be more influential than the prolific. 

When I met B. at your house last week, 
you whispered to me in the drawing-room that 
he was a man of the most remarkable attain- 
ments, who, to the great regret of all his 
friends, had never employed his abilities to 
any visible purpose. We had not time for a 
conversation on this subject, because B. him- 
self immediately joined us. His talk remind- 
ed me very much of Joubert — not that I ever 
knew Joubert personally, though I have lived 
very near to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where 
Joubert lived ; but he is one of those charac- 
ters whom it is possible to know without hav- 
ing seen them in the flesh. His friends used 
to urge him to write something, and then he 
said, ' ' Pas encore. " ' ' Not yet ; I need a long 
peace." Tranquillity came, and then he said 
that God had only given force to his mind for 
a limited time, and that the time was past. 
Therefore, as Sainte-Beuve observed, for Jou- 
bert there was no medium ; either it was not 
yet time, or else the time was past. 

Nothing is more common than for other 



442 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

people to say this of us. They often say " Hf 
is too young," as Napoleon said of Ingres, 01 
else "He is too old," as Napoleon said of 
Greuze. It is more rare for a man himself to 
shrink from every enterprise, first under the 
persuasion that he is unprepared, and after- 
wards because the time is no longer opportune. 
Yet there does exist a certain very peculiar 
class of highly-gifted, diffident, delicate, un- 
productive minds, which impress those around 
them with an almost superstitious belief in 
their possibilities, yet never do anything to 
justify that belief. 

But may it not be doubted whether these 
minds have productive power of any kind? I 
believe that the full extent of Joubert's pro- 
ductive power is displayed in those sentences 
of his which have been preserved, and which 
reveal a genius of the rarest delicacy, but at 
the same time singularly incapable of sus- 
tained intellectual effort. He said that he 
could only compose slowly, and with an ex- 
treme fatigue. He believed, however, that 
the weakness lay in the instrument alone, in 
the composing faculties, and not in th~ facul- 
ties of thought, for he said that behind his 
weakness there was strength, as behind the 
strength of some others there was weakness. 

In saying this, it is probable that Joubert 
did not overestimate himself. He had 
strength of a certain kind, or rather he had 
quality ; he had distinction, which is a sort of 
strength in society and in literature. But he 
had no productive force, and I do not believe 



INTELLECTUAL IIYGIEXT^s. 443 

that his unproductiveness was a productive- 
ness checked by a fastidious taste; I believe 
that it was real, that he was not organized for 
production. 

Sainte-Beuve said that a modern philoso- 
pher was accustomed to distinguish three 
classes of minds — 

1. Those who are at once powerful and del- 
icate, who excel as they propose, execute 
what they conceive, and reach the great and 
true beautiful — a rare elite amongst mortals. 

2. A class of minds especially characterized 
by their delicacy, who feel that their idea is 
superior to their execution, their intelligence 
greater than their talent, even when the tal- 
ent is very real; they are easily dissatisfied 
with themselves, disdain easily won praises, 
and would rather judge, taste, and abstain 
from producing, than remain below their con- 
ception and themselves. Or if they write it 
is by fragments, for themselves only, at long 
intervals and at rare moments. Their fecun- 
dity is internal, and known to few. 

3. Lastly, there is a third class of minds 
more powerful and less delicate or difficult to 
please, who go on producing and publishing 
themselves without being too much dissatis- 
fied with their work. 

The majority of our active painters and 
writers, who fill modern exhibitions, and pro- 
duce the current literature of the day, belong 
to the last class, to which we are all greatly 
indebted for the daily bread of literature and 
art. 



444 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

But Sainte-Beuve believed that Joubert be- 
longed to the second class, and I suspect that 
both Sainte-Beuve and many others have 
credited that class with a potential produc- 
tiveness beyond its real endowments. Minds 
of the Joubert class are admirable and valua- 
ble in their way, but they are really, and not 
apparently, sterile. 

And why would we have it otherwise? 
When we lament that a man of culture has 
" done nothing," as we say, we mean that he 
has not written books. Is it necessary, is it 
desirable, that every cultivated person should 
write books? 

On the contrary, it seems that a more per- 
fect intellectual life may be attained by the 
silent student than by authors. The writer 
for the public is often so far its slave that he 
is compelled by necessity or induced by the 
desire for success (since it is humiliating to 
write unsaleable books as well as unprofit- 
able) to deviate from his true path, to leave 
the subjects that most interest him for other 
subjects which interest him less, and there- 
fore to acquire knowledge rather as a matter 
of business than as a labor of love. But the 
student who never publishes, and does not in- 
tend to publish, may follow his own genius 
and take the knowledge which belongs to him 
by natural affinity. Add to this the immense 
saving of time effected by abstinence from 
writing. Whilst the writer is polishing his 
periods, and giving hours to the artistic exi- 
gencies of mere form, the reader is adding to 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 445 

his knowledge. Thackeray said that writers 
were not great readers, because they had not 
the time. 

The most studious Frenchman I ever met 
with used to say that he so hated the pen as 
scarcely to resolve to write a letter. He re- 
minded me of Joubert in this ; he often said, 
44 J'ai horreur de la plume." Since he had no 
profession his leisure was unlimited, and he 
employed it in educating himself without any 
other purpose than this, the highest purpose 
of all, to become a cultivated man. The very 
prevalent idea that lives of this kind are fail- 
ures unless they leave some visible achieve- 
ment as a testimony and justification of their 
labors, is based upon a narrow conception both 
of duty and of utility. Men of this unproduc- 
tive class are sure to influence their immedi- 
ate neighborhood by the example of their life. 
Isolated as they are too frequently in the prov- 
inces, in the midst of populations destitute 
of the higher culture, they often establish the 
notion of it notwithstanding the contemptuous 
estimates of the practical people around them, 
A single intellectual life, thus modestly lived 
through in the obscurity of a country-town, 
may leave a tradition and become an enduring 
influence. In this, as in all things, let us trust 
the arrangements of Nature. If men are at 
the same time constitutionally studious and 
constitutionally unproductive, in must be that 
production is not the only use of 'study. Jou- 
bert was right in keeping silence when he felt 
no impulses to speak, right also in saying the 



446 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

little that he did say without a superfluous 
word. His mind is more fully known, and 
more influential, than many which are abun- 
dantly productive. 



LETTER V. 

TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN. 

Some intellectual products possible only in excitement— By- 
ron's authority on the subject — Can inventive minds work 
regularly? — Sir Walter Scott's opinion — Napoleon on the 
winning of victories — The prosaic business of men of gen- 
ius — " Waiting for inspiration "—Rembrandt's advice to a 
young painter— Culture necessary to inspiration itself— 
Byron, Keats, Morris— Men of genius may be regular as 
students. 

In my last letter to you on quiet regularity 
of work, I did not give much consideration to 
another matter which, in certain kinds of 
work, has to be taken into account, for I pre- 
ferred to make that the subject of a separate 
letter. There are certain intellectual products 
which are only possible in hours or minutes of 
great cerebral excitement. Byron said that 
when people were surprised to find poets very 
much like others in the ordinary intercourse 
of life, their surprise was due to ignorance of 
this. If people knew, Byron said, that poeti- 
cal production came from an excitement 
which from its intensity could only be tempo- 
rary, they would not expect poets to be very 
different from other people when not under 
the influence of this excitement. Now, we 
may take the word " poet,' 1 in this connection, 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 447 

in the very largest sense. All men who have 
the gift of invention are poets. The inven- 
tive ideas come to them at unforeseen mo- 
ments, and have to he seized when they come, 
so that the true inventor works sometimes 
with vertiginous rapidity, and afterwards re- 
mains for days or weeks without exercising 
the inventive faculty at all. The question is, 
can you make an inventive mind work on the 
principle of measured and regular advance. 
Is such counsel as that in my former letter 
applicable to inventors? 

Scott said, that although he had known 
many men of ordinary abilities who were ca- 
pable of perfect regularity in their habits, he 
had never known a man of genius who was 
so. The popular impression concerning men 
of genius is very strong in the same sense, 
but it is well not to attach too much impor- 
tance to popular impressions concerning men 
of genius, for the obvious reason that such 
men come very little under popular observa- 
tion. When they work it is usually in the 
most perfect solitude, and even people who 
live in the same house know very little, real- 
ly, of their intellectual habits. 

The truth seems to be, first, that the mo- 
ments of high excitement, of noblest inven- 
tion, are rare, and not to be commanded by the 
will ; but, on the other hand, that in order to 
make the gift of invention produce its full ef- 
fect in any department of human effort, vast 
labors of preparation are necessary, and these 
labors may be pursued as steadily as you like. 



448 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Napoleon I. used to say that battles were won 
by the sudden flashing of an idea through the 
brain of the commander at a certain critical 
instant. The capacity for generating this 
sudden electric spark was military genius. 
The spark flashed independently of the will ; 
the General could not win that vivid illumin- 
ation by labor or by prayer ; it came only in 
the brain of genius from the intense anxiety 
and excitement of the actual conflict. Napo- 
leon seems always to have counted upon it, 
always to have believed that when the criti- 
cal instant arrived the wild confusion of the 
battle-field would be illuminated for him by 
that burst of sudden flame. But if Napoleon 
had been ignorant of the prosaic business of 
his profession, to which he attended more 
closely than any other commander, what 
would these moments of supreme clearness 
have availed him, or would they ever have 
come to him at all? If they had come to him, 
they would have revealed only the extent of 
his own negligence. Instead of showing him 
ivhat to do, they would have made painfully 
evident what ought to have been done. But it 
is more probable that these clear moments 
would never have occurred to a mind unpre- 
pared by study. Clear military inspirations 
never occur to shopkeepers and farmers, as 
bright ideas about checkmates occur only to 
persons who have studied chess. The prosaic 
business, then, of the man of genius is to ac- 
cumulate that preparatory knowledge with-, 
out which his genius can never be available, 



LN TEL LECTUAL 11 YQIENIC8. 449 

and he can do work of this kind as regularly 
as he likes. 

The one fatal mistake which is committed 
habitually by people who have the scarcely 
desirable gift of half -genius is "waiting for 
inspiration." They pass week after week in 
a state of indolence, unprofitable alike to the 
mind and the purse, under pretext of waiting 
for intellectual flashes like those which came 
to Napoleon on his battle-fields. They ought 
to remember the advice given by one of the 
greatest artists of the seventeenth century to 
a young painter of his acquaintance. " Prac- 
tise assiduously what you already know, and 
in course of time other things will become 
clear to you.*' The inspirations come only to 
the disciplined ; the indolent wait for them in 
vain. 

If you have genius, therefore, or believe 
you have, it is admitted that you cannot be 
perpetually in a state of intense excitement. 
If you were in that state without ceasing, you 
would go mad. You cannot be expected to 
write poetry in the plodding ox-pace manner 
advocated for intellectual work generally in 
my last letter. As for that good old compari- 
son between the hare and the tortoise, it may 
be answered for you, simply, that you are not 
a tortoise, and that what is a most wise pro- 
cedure for tortoises may be impracticable for 
you. The actual composition of poetry, es- 
pecially poetry of a fiery kind, like— 

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, 1 ' 
29 



450 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of Byron, is to be done not when the poet 
will, but when he can, or rather, when he 
must. 

But if you are a wise genius you will feel 
how necessary is culture even for work of 
that kind. Byron would not have felt any 
enthusiasm for the isles of Greece if he had 
not known something of their history. The 
verses are an inspiration, but they could 
never have occurred to a quite uncultivated 
person, however bright his inspirations. Even 
more obviously was the genius of Keats de- 
pendent upon his culture. He did not read 
Greek, but from translations of Greek litera- 
ture and from the direct study of Greek art 
he got the sort of material that he needed. 
And in our own day Morris has been evi- 
dently a very diligent student of many liter- 
atures. What I insist upon is, that we could 
not have had the real Keats, the real Morris, 
unless they had prepared themselves by cult- 
ure. We see immediately that the work they 
have done is their work, specially, that they 
were specially adapted for it- -inspired for it, 
if you will. But how evident it is that the 
inspiration could never have produced the 
work, or anything like it, without labor in 
the accumulation of material ! 

Now, although men of genius cannot be 
regularly progressive in actual production, 
cannot write so many verses a day, regularly, 
as you may spin yarn, they can be very regu- 
lar as students, and some of the best of them 
have been quite remarkable for unflinching 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 451 

steadiness of application in that way. The 
great principle recommended by Mr. Galton, 
of not looking forward eagerly to the end of 
your journey, but interesting yourself chiefly 
in the progress of it, is as applicable to the 
studies of men of genius as to those of more 
ordinary persons. 



LETTER VI. 

TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST. 

On some verses of Goethe— Man not constituted like a planet 
—Matthew Arnold's poem, " Self-dependence"— rPoetry 
* and prose— The wind more imitable than the stars — The 
stone in Glen Croe— Rest and be thankful. 

"Rambling over the wild moors, with 
thoughts oftentimes as wild and dreary as 
those moors, the young Carlyle, who had 
been cheered through his struggling sadness, 
and strengthened for the part he was to play 
in life, by the beauty and the wisdom which 
Goethe had revealed to him, suddenly con- 
ceived the idea that it would be a pleasant 
and a fitting thing if some of the few admirers 
in England forwarded to Weimar a trifling 
token of their admiration. On reaching home 
Mr. Carlyle at once sketched the design of a 
seal to be engraved, the serpent of eternity 
encircling a star, with the words ohne Hast, 
Ghne East (unhasting, unresting), in allusion 
to the well-known verses — 



452 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

* Wie das Gestirn, 
Ohne Hast 
Aber ohne Rast 
Drehe sich jeder 
Um die eigne Last,' 

(Like a star, unhasting, unresting, be each 
one fulfilling his God-given * hest.') " * 

This is said so beautifully, and seems so 
wise, that it may easily settle down into the 
mind as a maxim and rule of life. Had we 
been told in plain prose to take no rest, with- 
out the beautiful simile of the star, and with- 
out the wise restriction about haste, our com- 
mon sense would have rebelled at once ; but 
as both beauty and wisdom exist together in 
the gem-like stanza, our judgment remains 
silent in charmed acquiescence. 

Let us ask ourselves, however, about this 
Stella example, whether man is naturally so 
constituted as to be able to imitate it. A 
planet moves without haste, because it is inca- 
pable of excitement ; and without rest, because 
it is incapable of fatigue. A planet makes 
no effort, and encounters no friction or resist- 
ance of any kind. Man is so constituted as to 
feel frequently the stimulus of excitement, 
which immediately translates itself either into 
actual acceleration or into the desire for accel- 
eration — a desire which cannot be restrained 
without an effort ; and whatever man under- 
takes to do he encounters friction and resist- 
ance, which, for him, always sooner or later 
inevitably induce fatigue. Man is neither 

* Lewes's " Life of Goethe," Book vii. chap. 8. 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 453 

constituted like a star nor situated like a star, 
and therefore it is not possible for him to exist 
as stars exist. 

You will object to this criticism that it 
handles a delicate little poem very roughly, 
and you may tell me that I am unfit to re- 
ceive the wisdom of the poets, which is al- 
ways uttered with a touch of Oriental exag- 
geration. Certainly Goethe could never 
mean that a man should kill himself by labors 
literally incessant. Goethe's own life is the 
best elucidation of his true meaning. The 
example of the star was held up to us to be 
followed only within the limits of our human 
nature, as a Christian points to the example 
of Christ. In the same spirit Matthew Ar- 
nold wrote his noble poem " Self -dependence,' ' 
in which he tells us to live like the stars and 
the sea :— 

" Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, 
On my heart your mighty charm renew; 

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you." 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 

Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
In the rustling night-air came the answer: 

** Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they. 

" Unaff righted by the silence round them, 

Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 

Yield them love, amusement, sympathy." 

The true intention of poetical teachings like 
these is in the influence they have over the 
feelings. If a star makes me steadier in my 



454 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

labor, less of a victim to vain agitation, in 
consequence of Goethe's verses; if the stars 
and the sea together renew more fully their 
mighty charm upon my heart because those 
stanzas of Arnold have fixed themselves in 
my memory, the poets have done their work. 
But the more positive prosateur has his work 
to do also, and you, as it seems to me, need 
this positive help of prose. 

You are living a great deal too much like a 
star, and not enough like a human being. 
You do not hasten often, but you never rest, 
except when Nature mercifully prostrates 
you in irresistible sleep. Like the stars and 
the sea in Arnold's poem, you do not ask sur- 
rounding things to yield you love, amuse- 
ment, sympathy. The stars and the sea can 
do without these refreshments of the brain 
and heart, but you cannot. Rest is necessary 
to recruit your intellectual forces ; sympathy 
is necessary to prevent your whole nature 
from stiffening like a rotifer without moist- 
ure ; love is necessary to make life beautiful 
for you, as the plumage of certain birds be- 
comes splendid when they pair ; and without 
amusement you will lose the gayety which 
wise men try to keep as the best legacy of 
youth. 

Let your rest be perfect in its season, like 
the rest of waters that are still. If you will 
have a* model for your living, take neither 
the stars, for they fly without ceasing, nor 
the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the river 
that cannot stay, but rather let vour life be 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 455 

like that of the summer air, which has times 
of noble energy and times of perfect peace. 
It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the 
miller thanks it on the breezy uplands; it 
works generously for the health and wealth 
of all men, yet it claims its hours of rest. 4 - I 
have pushed the fleet, I have turned the mill, 
I have refreshed the city, and now, though 
the captain may walk impatiently on the 
quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the 
city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases 
me," 

You have learned many things, my friend, 
but one thing you have not learned — the art 
of resting. That stone in G-len Croe ought to 
have impressed its lesson on the mind of 
many a traveller, long before Earl Russell 
gave it a newspaper celebrity. Have we not 
rested there together, you and I, a little in 
advance of the coach, which the weary horses 
were still slowly dragging up the tedious hill? 
And as we sat on the turf, and looked down 
the misty glen, did we not read the lesson 
there engraven? How good and human the 
idea was, the idea of setting up that graven 
stone in the wilderness ; how full of sympathy 
is that inscription for all the weakness and 
weariness of humanity! Once, in the ardor 
of youth, there shone before me a golden star 
in heaven, and on the deep azure around it 
" OJine Hast, ohne Rast," in letters of steady 
flame ; but now I see more frequently a plain 
little stone set up in the earth, with the in- 
scription, "Rest, and be thankful ! " 



456 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Is not the stone just a little like a grave- 
stone, my friend? Perhaps it is. But if we 
take rest when we require it during life, we 
shall not need the grave's rest quite so soon. 



LETTER VII. 

TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST. 

The regret for lost time often a needless one— Tillier's doc- 
trine about flanerie — How much is gained in idle 
hours— Sainte-Beuve's conviction that whatever he did he 
studied the infinite book of the world and of life — Harness 
— Free play of the mind necessary — The freedom of a 
grain of desert-sand— The freedom ot' the wild bee. 

If we asked any intellectual workman 
what he would do if his life were to be lived 
over again, I believe the answer, whatever 
its form, would amount ultimately to this : 
" I would economize my time better." Very 
likely if the opportunity were granted him 
he would do nothing of the sort ; very likely 
he would waste his time in ways more au- 
thorized by custom, yet waste it just as ex- 
travagantly as he had done after his own 
original fashion ; but it always seems to us as 
if we could use the time better if we had it 
over again. 

It seems to me in looking back over the last 
thirty years, that the only time really wasted 
has been that spent in laborious obedience 
to some external authority. It may be a 
dangerous doctrine which Claude Tillier ex- 
pressed in an immortal sentence, but danger* 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENU 'S. 457 

ous or not, it is full of intellectual truth : ' ' Le 
temps le mieux employe est celui que Ton 
pertiV 1 * If what we are accustomed to con- 
sider lost time could be removed, as to its 
effects at least, from the sum of our existence, 
it is certain that we should suffer from a 
great intellectual impoverishment. All the 
best knowledge of mankind, to begin with, is 
acquired in hours which hard-working people 
consider lost hours — in hours, that is, of 
pleasure and recreation. Deduct all that we 
have learnt about men in times of recreation, 
in clubs and smoking-rooms, on the hunting- 
field, on the cricket-ground, on the deck of 
the yacht, on the box of the drag or the dog- 
cart, would the residue be worth very much? 
would it not be a mere heap of dry bones 
without any warm flesh to cover them? 
Even the education of most of us, such as it 
is, has been in a great measure acquired out 
of school, as it were; I mean outside of the 
acknowledged duties of our more serious ex- 
istence. Few Englishmen past forty have 
studied English literature either as a college 
exercise or a professional preparation; they 
have read it privately, as an amusement. 
Few Englishmen past forty have studied 
modern languages, or science, or the fine arts, 
from any obedience to duty, but merely from 
taste and inclination. And even if we stud- 
ied these things formally, ' as young men 
often do at the present day, it is not from the 

* The best employed time is that which one loses. 



458 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

formal study that we should get the perfume 
of the language or the art, but from idle 
hours in foreign lands and galleries. It is su- 
perfluous to recommend idleness to the unin- 
tellectual, but the intellectual too often un- 
dervalue it. The laborious intellect con- 
tracts a habit of strenuousness which is some- 
times a hindrance to its best activity. 

"I have arrived," said Sainte-Beuve, "per- 
haps by way of secretly excusing my own 
idleness, perhaps by a deeper feeling of the 
principle that all comes to the same, at the 
conclusion that whatever I do or do not, 
working in the study at continuous labor, 
scattering myself in articles, spreading my- 
self about in society, giving my time away to 
troublesome callers, to poor people, to rendez- 
vous, in the street, no matter to whom and to 
what, I cease not to do one and the same 
thing, to read one and the same book, the in- 
finite book of the world and of life, that no 
one ever finishes, in which the wisest read 
farthest ; I read it then at all the pages which 
present themselves, in broken fragments, 
backwards, what matters it? I never cease 
going on. The greater the medley, the more 
frequent the interruption, the more I get on 
with this book in which one is never beyond 
the middle ; but the profit is to have had it 
open before one at all sorts of different 
pages." 

A distinguished author wrote to another 
author less distinguished*. "You have gone 
through a good deal of really vigorous study t 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 459 

but have not been in harness yet. " By harness 
he meant discipline settled beforehand like mil- 
itary drill. Now, the advantages of drill are 
evident and very generally recognized, but 
the advantages of intellectual flanerie are not 
so generally recognized. For the work of 
the intellect to be clear and healthy, a great 
deal of free play of the mind is absolutely 
necessary. Harness is good for an hour or 
two at a time, but the finest intellects have 
never lived in harness. In reading any book 
that has much vitality you are sure to meet 
with many allusions and illustrations which 
the author hit upon, not when he was in har- 
ness, but out at grass. Harness trains us to 
the systematic performance of our w^ork, and 
increases our practical strength by regulated 
exercise, but it does not supply everything 
that is necessary to the perfect development 
of the mind. The truth is, that we need both 
the discipline of harness and the abundant 
nourishment of the free pasture. Yet may 
not our freedom be the profitless, choiceless, 
freedom of a grain of desert-sand, carried 
hither and thither by the wind, gaining noth- 
ing and improving nothing, so that it does 
not signify where it was carried yesterday or 
where it may fall to-morrow, but rather the 
liberty of the wild bee, whose coming and go- 
ing are ordered by no master, nor fixed by 
any premeditated regulation, yet which misses 
no opportunity of increase, and comes home 
laden in the twilight. Who knows where he 
has wandered ; who can tell over what banks 



460 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

and streams the hum of his wings has sounded ? 
Is anything in nature freer than he is; can 
anything account better for a rational use of 
freedom? Would he do his work better if 
tiny harness were ingeniously contrived foi 
him ? Where then would be the golden honey, 
and where the waxen cells? ~ 



LETTEE VIII. 

TO A FRIEND (HIGHLY CULTIVATED) WHO CON- 
GRATULATED HIMSELF ON HAVING ENTIRELY 
ABANDONED THE HABIT OF READING NEWS- 
PAPERS. 

Advantages in economy of time— Much of what we read in 
newspapers is useless to our culture— The too great im- 
portance which they attach to novelty — Distortion by 
party spirit— An instance of false presentation- 
Gains to serenity by abstinence from newspapers— News- 
papers keep up our daily interest in each other — The 
French peasantry — The newspaper-reading Americans— 
An instance of total abstinence from newspapers— Au- 
guste Comte— A suggestion of Emerson's— The work of 
newspaper corresponds ts — War correspondents — Mr. 
Stanley — M. Erdan, of the Temps. 

Your abstinence from newspaper reading is 
not anew experiment in itself, though it is 
new in reference to your particular case, and 
I await its effects with interest. I shall be 
curious to observe the consequences, to an in- 
tellect constituted as yours is, of that total 
cutting off from the public interests of your 
own century which an abstinence from news- 
papers implies. It is clear that, whatever the 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. Un 

loss may be, you have a definite gain to set 
against it. The time which you have hith- 
erto given to newspapers, and which may be 
roughly estimated at about five hundred 
hours a year, is henceforth a valuable time- 
income to be applied to whatever purposes 
your best wisdom may select. When an in- 
tellectual person has contrived by the force of 
one simple resolution to effect so fine an 
economy as this, it is natural that he should 
congratulate himself. Your feelings must be 
like those of an able finance minister who has 
found means of closing a great leak in the 
treasury — if any economy possible in the 
finances of a State could ever relatively equal 
that splendid stroke of time-thrift which your 
force of will has enabled you to effect. In 
those five hundred hours, which are now 
your own, you may acquire a science or ob- 
tain a more perfect command over one of the 
languages which you have studied. Some de- 
partment of your intellectual labors which 
has hitherto been unsatisfactory to you, be- 
cause it was too imperfectly cultivated, may 
henceforth be as orderly and as fruitful as a 
well-kept garden. You may become thorough- 
ly conversant with the works of more than 
one great author whom you have neglected, 
not from lack of interest, but from want of 
time. You may open some old chamber of 
the memory that has been dark and disused 
for many a year ; you may clear the cobwebs 
away, and let the fresh light in, and make it 
habitable once again. 



462 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Against these gains, of which some to a man 
of your industry are certain, and may be 
counted upon, what must be our estimate of 
the amount of sacrifice or loss? It is clear to 
both of us that much of what we read in the 
newspapers is useless to our culture. A large 
proportion of newspaper-writing is occupied 
with speculation on what is likely to happen 
in the course of a few months ; therefore, by 
waiting until the time is past, we know the 
event without having wasted time in specula- 
tions which could not effect it. Another rath- 
er considerable fraction of newspaper matter 
consists of small events which have interest 
for the day, owing to their novelty, but which 
will not have the slightest permanent impor- 
tance. The whole press of a newspaper-read- 
ing country, like England or America, may 
be actively engaged during the space of a 
week or a fortnight in discussing some inci- 
dent which everybody will have forgotten in 
six months ; and besides these sensational in- 
cidents, there are hundreds of less notorious 
ones, often fictitious, inserted simply for the 
temporary amusement of the reader. The 
greatest evil of newspapers, in their effect on 
the intellectual life, is the enormous impor- 
tance which they are obliged to attach to 
mere novelty. From the intellectual point of 
view, it is of no consequence whether a 
thought occurred twenty-two centuries ago to 
Aristotle or yesterday evening to Mr. Charles 
Darwin, and it is one of the distinctive marks 
of the truly intellectual to be able to take a 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 463 

hearty interest in all truth, independently of 
the date of its discovery. The emphasis given 
by newspapers to novelty exhibits things in 
wrong relations, as the lantern shows you what 
is nearest at the cost of making the general 
landscape appear darker by the contrast. Be- 
sides this exhibition of things in wrong rela- 
tions, there is a positive distortion arising from 
the unscrupulousness of party, a distortion 
which extends far beyond the limits of the 
empire. 

An essay might be written on the dis- 
tortion of English affairs in the French 
press, or of French affairs in the English 
press, by writers who are as strongly partisan 
in another country as in their own. ; l It is 
such a grand thing," wrote an English Paris 
correspondent in 1870, "for Adolphus Thiers, 
son of a poor laborer of Aix, and in early life 
a simple journalist, to be at the head of the 
Government of France." This is a fair speci- 
men of the kind of false presentation which is 
so common in party journalism. The news- 
paper from which I have quoted it was strong- 
ly opposed to Thiers, being in fact one of the 
principal organs of the English Bonapartists. 
It is not true that Thiers was the son of a 
poor laborer of Aix. His father was a work- 
man of Marseilles, his mother belonging to a 
family in which neither wealth nor culture 
had been rare, and his mother's relatives had 
him educated at the Lycee. The art of the 
journalist in bringing together the two ex- 
tremes of a career remarkable for its steady 



464 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ascent had for its object to produce the idea oi 
incongruity, of sudden and unsuitable eleva 
tion. Not only M. Thiers, however, but every 
human being starts from a very small begin- 
ning, since every man begins life as a baby. 
It is a great rise for one baby to the Presi- 
dency of the French Eepublic ; it was also a 
great rise for other babies who have attained 
the premiership of England. The question is, 
not what Thiers may have been seventy years 
ago, but what he was immediately before his 
acceptance of the highest office of the State. 
He was the most trusted and the most experi- 
enced citizen, so that the last step in his 
career was as natural as the elevation of 
Reynolds to the presidency of the Acad- 
emy. 

It is difficult for any one who cares for jus- 
tice to read party journals without frequent 
irritation, and it does not signify which side 
the newspaper takes. Men are so unfair in 
controversy that we best preserve the seren- 
ity of the intellect by studiously avoiding all 
literature that has a controversial tone. By 
your new rule of abstinence* from newspapers 
you will no doubt gain almost as much in 
serenity as in time. To the ordinary news- 
paper reader there is little loss of serenity, be- 
cause he reads only the newspaper that he 
agrees with, and however unfair it is, he is 
pleased by its unfairness. But the highest 
and best culture makes us disapprove of un- 
fairness on our own side of the question also. 
We are pained by it ; we feel humiliated by 



INTEL LECTUA L If TGIENIi '& 405 

it ; we lament its persistence and its perver- 
sity. 

I have said nearl/ all that has to be said in 
favor of your rule of abstinence. I have 
granted that the newspapers cost us much 
time, which, if employed for great intellect- 
ual purposes, would carry us very far ; that 
they give disproportionate views of things by 
the emphasis they give to novelty, and false 
views by the unfairness which belongs to 
party. I might have added that newspaper 
writers give such a preponderance to politics 
— not political philosophy, but to the every- 
day work of politicians — that intellectual cult- 
ure is thrown into the background, and the 
election of a single member of Parliament is 
made to seem of greater national importance 
than the birth of a powerful idea. And yet, 
notwithstanding all these considerations, 
which are serious indeed for the intellectual, 
I believe that your resolution is unwise, and 
that you will find it to be untenable. One 
momentous reason more than counterbalances 
all these considerations put together. News- 
papers are to the whole civilized world what 
the daily house-talk is to the members of a 
household ; they keep up our daily interest in 
each other, they save us from the evils of iso- 
lation. To live as a member of the great 
white race of men, the race that has filled 
Europe and America, and colonized or con- 
quered whatever other territories it has been 
pleased to occupy, to share from day to day 
its cares, its thoughts, its aspirations, it is 
30 



4G6 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

necessary that every man should read his 
daily newspaper. Why are the French peas- 
ants so bewildered and at *tea, so out of place in 
the modern world ? It is because they never 
read a newspaper. And why are the inhabi- 
tants of the United States, though scattered 
over a territory fourteen times the area of 
France, so much more capable of concerted 
political action, so much more alive and mod- 
ern, so much more interested in new discov- 
eries of all kinds and capable of selecting and 
utilizing the best of them? It is because the 
newspaper penetrates everywhere ; and even 
the lonely dweller on the prairie or in the 
forest is not intellectually isolated from the 
great currents of public life which flow 
through the telegraph and the press. 

The experiment of doing without newspa- 
pers has been tried by a whole class, the 
French peasantry, with the consequences that 
Ave know, and it has also from time to time 
been tried by single individuals belonging to 
more enlightened sections of society. Let us 
take one instance, and let us note what appear 
to have been the effects of this abstinence. 
Auguste Comte abstained from newspapers 
as a teetotaller abstains from spirituous liq- 
uors. Now, Auguste Comte possessed a gift 
of nature which, though common in minor 
degrees, is in the degree in which he possessed 
it rarer than enormous diamonds. That gift 
was the power of dealing with abstract intel- 
lectual conceptions, and living amidst them 
always, as the practical mind lives in and 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 467 

deals with material things. And it happened 
in Comte's case, as it usually does happen in 
cases of very peculiar endowment, that the 
gift was accompanied by the instincts neces- 
sary to its perfect development and to its pres- 
ervation. Comte instinctively avoided the 
conversation of ordinary people, because he 
felt it to be injurious to the perfect exercise of 
his faculty, and for the same reason he would 
not read newspapers. In imposing upon him- 
self these privations he acted like a very emi- 
nent living etcher, who, having the gift of an 
extraordinary delicacy of hand, preserves it 
by abstinence from everything that may effect 
the steadiness of the nerves. There is a cer- 
tain difference, however, between the two 
cases which I am anxious to accentuate. The 
etcher runs no risk of any kind by his rule of 
abstinence. He refrains from several common 
indulgences, but he denies himself nothing 
that is necessary to health. I may even go 
farther, and say that the rules w^hich he ob- 
serves for the sake of perfection in his art, 
might be observed with advantage by many 
who are not artists, for the sake of their own 
tranquillity, without the loss of anything but 
pleasure. The rules which Comte made for 
himself involved, on the other hand, a great 
peril. In detaching himself so completely 
from the interests and ways of thinking of 
ordinary men, he elaborated, indeed, the con- 
ceptions of the positive philosophy, but arrived 
afterwards at a peculiar kind of intellectual 
decadence from which it is possible—probable 



468 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

even — that the rough common sense of the 
newspapers might have preserved him. They 
would have saved him, I seriously believe, 
from that mysticism which led to the inven- 
tion of a religion far surpassing in unreasona- 
bleness the least rational of the creeds of tra- 
dition. It is scarcely imaginable, except on 
the supposition of actual insanity, that any 
regular reader of the Times, the Temps, the 
Daily Neivs, and the Saturday Review, should 
believe the human race to be capable of receiv- 
ing as the religion of its maturity the Comtist 
Trinity and the Comtist Virgin Mother. A 
Trinity consisting of the Great Being (or hu- 
manity), the Great Fetish (or the earth), and 
the Great Midst (or space) ; a hope for the hu- 
man race (how unphysiological ! ) that women 
might ultimately arrive at maternity inde- 
pendently of virile help, — these are concep- 
tions so remote, not only from the habits of 
modern thought, but (what is more impor- 
tant) from its tendencies, that they could not 
occur to a mind in regular communication 
with its contemporaries. 

u If you should transfer the amount of your 
reading day by day from the newspaper to 
the standard authors? " To this suggestion of 
Emerson's it may be answered that the loss 
would be greater than the gain. The writers 
of Queen Anne's time could educate an Eng- 
lishman of Queen Anne's time, but they can 
only partially educate an Englishman of Queen 
Victoria's time. The'mind is like a mercha tit's 
ledger, it requires to be continually posted up 



IS TELLECTUAL 11 YG1KS ICS. 4M 

to the latest date. Even the last telegram 
may have upset some venerable theory that 
has been received as infallible for ages. 

In times when great historical events are 
passing before our eyes, the journalist is to 
future historians what the African traveller 
is to the map-makers. His work is neither 
complete nor orderly, but it is the fresh record 
of an eye-witness, and enables us to become 
ourselves spectators of the mighty drama of 
the world. Never was this service so well 
rendered as it is now, by correspondents who 
achieve heroic feats of bodily and mental 
prow^ess, exposing themselves to the greatest 
dangers, and writing much and well in cir- 
cumstances the most unfavorable to literary 
composition. How vividly the English war 
correspondents brought before us the reality 
of the great conflict between Germany and 
France! What a romantic achievement, 
worthy to be sung in heroic verse, was the 
finding of Livingstone by Stanley ! Not less 
interesting have been the admirable series of 
letters by M. Erdan in the Temps, in which, 
with the firmness of a master-hand, he has 
painted from the life, week after week, year 
after year, the decline and fall of the temporal 
power of the Papacy. I cannot think that 
any page of Roman history is better worth 
reading than his letters, more interesting, im 
structive, lively, or authentic. Yet with your 
contempt for newspapers you would lose all 
this profitable entertainment, and seek instead 
of it the accounts of former epochs not half go 



470 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

interesting as this fall of the temporal power, 
accounts written in most cases by men in li- 
braries who had not seen the sovereigns they 
wrote about, nor talked with the people whose 
condition they attempted to describe. You 
have a respect for these accounts because they 
are printed in books, and bound in leather, 
and entitled "history," whilst you despise the 
direct observation of a man like Erdan, be- 
cause he is only a journalist, and his letters 
are published in a newspaper. Is there not 
some touch of prejudice in this, some mistake, 
some narrowness of intellectual aristocracy? 



LETTER IX. 

TO AN AUTHOR WHO APPRECIATED CONTEMPO- 
RARY LITERATURE. 

Miss Mitford on the selfishness of authors— A suggestion of 
Emerson's— A laconic rule of his— Traces of jealousy — 
And of a more subtle feeling — A contradiction— Necessary 
to resist the invasion of the present— A certain equilib- 
rium—The opposite of a pedant— The best classics not 
pedants, but artists. 

Reading the other day a letter by Miss Mit- 
ford, I was reminded of you as the eye is re- 
minded of green when it sees scarlet. You, 
whose interest in literature has ever kept pace 
with the time, to whom no new thing is un- 
welcome if only it is good, are safe from her 
accusations; but how many authors have de- 
served them ! Miss Mitford is speaking of a 
certain writer who is at the same time a eier- 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 471 

gyman, and whom it is not difficult to recog- 
nize. 

"I never," she says, "saw him interested 
in the slightest degree by the work of any 
other author, except, indeed, one of his own 
followers or of his own clique, and then only 
as admiring or helping him. He has great 
kindness and great sympathy with working- 
people, or with a dying friend, but I profess to 
you I am amazed at the utter selfishness of au- 
thors. I do not know one single poet who cares 
for any man's poetry but his own. In general 
they read no books except such as may be nec- 
essary to their own writings — that is to the 
work they happen to be about, and even then I 
suspect that they only read the bits that they 
may immediately want. You know the abso- 
lute ignorance in which Wordsworth lived of 
all modern works ; and if, out of compliment to 
a visitor, he thought it needful to seem to read 
or listen to two or three stanzas, he gave unhes- 
itating praise to the writer himself, but took 
especial care not to repeat the praise where it 
might have done him good — utterly fair and 
false." 

There are touches of this spirit of indiffer- 
ence to contemporary literature in several 
writers and scholars whom we know. There 
are distinct traces of it even in published 
writings, though it is much more evident in 
private life and habit. Emerson seriously 
suggests that ' ' the human mind would per- 
haps be a gainer if all the secondary writers 
were lost — say, in England, all but Shakes- 



472 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

peare, Milton, and Bacon, through the pro- 
founder study so drawn to those wonderful 
minds." In the same spirit we have Emer- 
son's laconic rule, ' ' Never read any but famed 
books," which suggests the remark that if 
men had obeyed this rule from the beginning, 
no book could ever have acquired reputation, 
and nobody would ever have read anything. 
The idea of limiting English literature to a 
holy trinity of Shakespeare, Milton, and 
Bacon, and voluntarily losing all other au- 
thors, seems to me the most intense expres- 
sion of the spirit of aristocracy in reading. 
It is as if a man were to decide in his own 
mind that society would be the better if all 
persons except the three Emperors were ex- 
cluded from it. There is a want of reliance 
upon one's own judgment, and an excess of 
faith in the estimates of others, when we re- 
solve to read only those books which come to 
us in the splendor of a recognized intellectual 
royalty. We read either to gain information, 
to have good thinking suggested to us, or to 
have our imagination stimulated. In the way 
of knowledge the best authors are always the 
most recent, so that Bacon could not suffice. 
In the way of thinking, our methods have 
gained in precision since Milton s time, and 
we are helped by a larger experience than his. 
The one thing which Shakespeare and Milton 
can do for us quite perfectly still, is to fill our 
imagination richly, and give it a fine stimu- 
lus. But modern writers can render us the 
same service. 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 47:J 

is there not a little jealousy of contempo- 
raries in the persistence with which some 
authors avoid them, and even engage others 
to avoid them? May not there be a shade of 
another feeling than jealousy, a feeling more 
subtle in operation, the undefined apprehen- 
sion that we may find, even amongst our 
more obscure contemporaries, merit equal to 
our own? So long as we restrict our reading 
to old books of great fame we are safe from 
this apprehension, for if we find admirable 
qualities, we know beforehand that the world 
has handsomely acknowledged them, and we 
indulge in the hope that our own admirable 
qualities will be recognized by posterity with 
equal liberality. But it creates an unpleasant 
feeling of uneasiness to see quantities of ob- 
scure contemporary work, done in a plain 
way to earn a living by men of third or fourth- 
rate reputation, or of no reputation at all, 
which in many respects would fairly sustain 
a comparison with our own. It is clear that 
an author ought to be the last person to 
advise the public not to read contemporary 
literature, since he is himself a maker of con- 
temporary literature; and there is a direct 
contradiction between the invitation to read 
his book, which he circulates by the act of 
publishing, and the advice which the book 
contains. Emerson is more safe from this 
obvious rejoinder when he suggests to us to 
transfer our reading day by day from the 
newspaper to the standard authors. But are 
these suggestions anything more than the 



474 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

reaction of an intellectual man against the 
too prevalent customs of the world? The 
reading practised by most people, by all who 
do not set before themselves intellectual cult- 
ure as one of the definite aims of life, is re- 
markable for the regularity with which it 
neglects all the great authors of the past. 
The books provided by the circulating library, 
the reviews and magazines, the daily news- 
papers, are read whilst they are novelties, 
but the standard authors are left on their 
shelves unopened. We require a firm resolu- 
tion to resist this invasion of what is new, 
because it flows like an unceasing river, and 
unless we protect our time against it by some 
solid embankment of unshakable rule and 
resolution, every nook and cranny of it will 
be filled and flooded. An Englishman whose 
life was devoted to culture, but who lived in 
an out-of-the-way place on the Continent, told 
me that he considered it a decided advantage 
to his mind to live quite outside of the English 
library system, because if he wanted to read 
a new book he had to buy it and pay heavily 
for carriage besides, which made him very 
careful in his choice. For the same reason 
he rejoiced that the nearest English news- 
room was two hundred miles from his resi- 
dence. 

But, on the other hand, what would be the 
condition of a man's mind who never read 
anything but the classic authors? He would 
live in an intellectual monastery, and would 
not even understand the classic authors them- 



INTEL L ECTUA I HYGIENIC®. 475 

selves, for we understand the past only by 
referring it to* what we know in the present. 

It is best to preserve our minds in a state of 
equilibrium, and not to allow our repugnance 
to what we see as an evil to drive us into an 
evil of an opposite kind. We are too often 
like those little toy-fish with a bit of steel in 
their mouths, which children attract with a 
magnet. If you present the positive pole of 
the magnet, the fish rushes at it at once, but 
if you offer the negative end it retreats con- 
tinually. Everything relatively to our char- 
acter has this positive or negative end, and we 
either rush to things or rush away from them. 
Some persons are actually driven away 
from the most entertaining writers because 
they happen to be what are called classics, be- 
cause pedants boast of having read them. I 
know a man who is exactly the opposite of a 
pedant, who has a horror of the charlatanism 
which claims social and intellectual position 
as the reward for having laboriously waded 
through those authors who are conventionally 
termed " classical," and this opposition to 
pedantry has given him an aversion to the 
classics themselves, which he never opens. 
The shallow pretence to admiration of famous 
writers which is current in the world is so dis- 
tasteful to the love of honesty and reality 
which is the basis of his character, that by 
an unhappy association of ideas he has ac- 
quired a repugnance to the writers them- 
selves. But such men as Horace, Terence, 
Shakespeare, Moliere, though they have had 



47S THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the misfortune to be praised and commen- 
tated upon by pedants, were in their lives the 
precise opposite of pedants ; they were artists 
whose study was human nature, and who 
lived without pretension in the common 
world of men. The pedants have a habit of 
considering these genial old artists as in some 
mysterious way their own private property, 
for do not the pedants live by expounding 
them? And some of us are frightened away 
from the fairest realms of poetry by the 
fences of these grim guardians. 



LETTER X. 

TO AN AUTHOR WHO KEPT VERY IRREGULAR 
HOURS. 

Julian Fane — His late hours — Regularity produced by habit — 
The time of the principal effort— That the chief work 
should be done in the best hours— Physicians prefer early 
to late work— The practice of Goethe and some modern 
authors— The morning worker ought to live in a tranquil 
neighborhood— Night- work— The medical objection to it— 
The student's objection to day-work— Time to be kept in 
masses by adults, but divided into small portions by chil- 
dren—Rapid turning of the mind— Cuvier eminent'for this 
faculty — The Duke of Wellington — The faculty more avail- 
able with some occupations than others — The slavery of a 
minute obedience to the clock— Broad rules the best — 
Books of agenda, good in business, but not in the higher 
intellectual pursuits. 

What you told me of your habits in the 
employment of your hours reminded me of 
Julian Fane. Mr. Lytton tells us that ' ' after 



INTELLECTUAL HYGTEXICS. 477 

a long day of professional business, followed 
by a late evening of social amusement, he 
would return in the small hours of the night 
to his books, and sit, unwearied, till sunrise 
in the study of them. Nor did he then seem 
to suffer from this habit of late hours. His 
nightly vigils occasioned no appearance of 
fatigue the next day. . . . He rarely rose be- 
fore noon, and generally rose much later." 

But however irregular a man's distribution 
of his time may be in the sense of wanting 
the government of fixed rules, there always 
comes in time a certain regularity by the 
mere operation of habit. People who get up 
very late hardly ever do so in obedience to a 
rule ; many get up early by rule, and many 
more are told that they ought to get up early, 
and believe it, and aspire to that virtue, but 
fail to carry it into practice. The late-risers 
are rebels and sinners — in this respect— to a 
man, and so persistently have the wise, from 
Solomon downwards, harped upon the moral 
loveliness of early rising and the degrada- 
tion which follows the opposite practice, that 
one can hardly get up after eight without 
either an uncomfortable sense of guilt or an ex- 
traordinary callousness. Yet the late-risers, 
though obeying no rule, for the abandoned 
sinner recognizes none, become regular in 
their late rising from the gradual fixing pow- 
er of habit. Even Julian Fane, though he 
regretted his desultory ways, "and dwelt 
with great earnestness on the importance 
of regular habits of work," was perhaps 



478 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

less irregular than he himself believed. We 
are sure to acquire habits; what is impor- 
tant is not so much that the habits should 
be regular, as that their regularity should 
be of the kind most favorable in the long run 
to the accomplishment of our designs, and 
this never conies by chance, it is the result of 
an effort of the will in obedience to govern- 
ing wisdom. 

The first question which every one who has 
the choice of his hours must settle for him- 
self is at what time of day he will make his 
principal effort ; for the day of every intellect- 
ual workman ought to be marked by a kind 
of artistic composition; there ought to be 
some one labor distinctly recognized as dom- 
inant, with others in subordination, and sub- 
ordination of various degrees. Now for the 
hours at which the principal effort ought to 
be made, it is not possible to fix them by 
the clock so as to be suitable for everybody, 
but a broad rule may be arrived at which is 
applicable to all imaginable cases. The rule 
is this— to do the chief work in the best hours ; 
to give it the pick of your day ; and by day 
I do not mean only the solar day, but the 
whole of the twenty-four hours. There is an 
important physiological reason for giving the 
best hours to the most important work. The 
better the condition of the brain and the body, 
and the more favorable the surrounding cir- 
cumstances, the smaller will be the cost to 
the organization of the labor that has to be 
done. It is always the safest way to do the 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 479 

heaviest (or most important) work at the 
time and under the conditions which make it 
the least costly. 

Physicians are unanimous in their prefer- 
ence of early to late work ; and no doubt, if 
the question were not complicated by other 
considerations, Ave could not do better than to 
follow their advice in its simplicity. Goethe 
wrote in the morning, with his faculties re- 
freshed by sleep and not yet excited by any 
stimulant. I could mention several living 
authors of eminence who pursue the same 
plan, and find it favorable alike to health 
and to production. The rule which they fol- 
low is never to write after lunch, leav- 
ing the rest of their time free for study 
and society, both of which are absolutely 
necessary to authors. According to this 
system it is presumed that the hours be- 
tween breakfast and lunch are the best 
hours. In many cases they are so. A per- 
son in fair health, after taking a light 
early breakfast without any heavier stimu- 
lant than tea or coffee, finds himself in a 
state of freshness highly favorable to sound 
and agreeable thinking. His brain will be in 
still finer order if the breakfast has been pre- 
ceded by a cold bath, with friction and a lit- 
tie exercise. The feeling of freshness, cleanli- 
ness, and moderate exhilaration, will last for 
several hours, and during those hours the in- 
tellectual work will probably be both lively 
and reasonable. It is difficult for a man who 
feels cheerful and refreshed, and whose task 



480 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

seems easy and light, to write anything mor- 
bid or perverse. 

But for the morning to be so good as I have 
just described it, the workman must be quite 
favorably situated. He ought to live in a 
very tranquil neighborhood, and to be as free 
as possible from anxiety as to what the post- 
man may have in reserve for him. If his 
study- window looks out on a noisy street, and 
if the day is sure, as it wears on, to bring 
anxious business of its own, then the increas- 
ing noise and the apprehension (even though 
it be almost entirely unconscious) of impend- 
ing business, will be quite sufficient to inter- 
fere with the work of any man who is the 
least in the world nervous, and almost all in- 
tellectual laborers are nervous, more or less. 
Men who have the inestimable advantage of 
absolute tranquillity, at all times, do well to 
work in the morning, but those who can only 
get tranquillity at times independent of their 
own choice have a strong reason for working 
at those times, whether they happen to be in 
the morning or not. 

In an excellent article on " Work " (evi- 
dently written by an experienced intellectual 
workman), which appeared in one of the early 
numoers of the Comhill Magazine, and was 
remarkable alike for practical wisdom and 
the entire absence of traditional dogmatism, 
the writer speaks frankly in favor of night- 
work, "If you can work at all at night, one 
hour at that time is worth any two in the 
morning. The house is hushed, the brain is 



IS TJELLEGTUAL 11 YGIENIV8. 4SJ 

clear, the distracting influences of the day 
are at an end. You have not to disturb your- 
self with thoughts of what you are about to 
do, or what you are about to suffer. You 
know that there is a gulf between you and 
the affairs of the outside world, almost like 
the chasm of death ; and that you need not 
take thought of the morrow until the mor- 
row has come. There are few really great 
thoughts, such as the world will not willingly 
let die, that have not been conceived under 
the quiet stars.' ' 

The medical objection to night- work in the 
case of literary men would probably be that 
the night is too favorable to literary produc- 
tion. The author of the Essay just quoted 
says that at night "you only drift into deep- 
er silence and quicker inspiration. If the 
right mood is upon you. you ivrite on; if not, 
your pillow awaits you." Exactly so; that is 
to say, the brain, owing to the complete ex- 
ternal tranquillity, can so concentrate its ef- 
forts on the subject in hand as to work itself 
up into a luminous condition which is fed by 
the most rapid destruction of the nervous, 
substance that ever takes place within thej 
walls of a human skull. ' ' If the right mood 
is upon you, you write on; " in other words, 
if you have once well lighted your spirit-lamp, 
it will go on burning so long as any spirit is 
left in it, for the air is so tranquil that noth- 
ing comes to blow it •out. You drift into 
deeper silence and "quicker inspiration." It 
31 



482 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

is just this quicker inspiration that the phy- 
sician dreads. 

Against this objection may be placed the 
equally serious objection to day-work, that 
every interruption, when you are particularly 
anxious not to be interrupted, causes a defi- 
nite loss and injury to the nervous system. 
The choice must therefore be made between 
two dangers, andjf they are equally balanced 
there can be no hesitation, because all the lit- 
erary interests of an author are on the side of 
the most tranquil time. Literary work is al- 
ways sure to be much better done when there 
is no fear of disturbance than under the ap- 
prehension of it; and precisely the same 
amount of cerebral effort will produce, when 
the work is uninterrupted, not only better 
writing, but a much greater quantity of writ- 
ing. The knowledge that he is working well 
and productively is an element of health to 
every workman because it encourages cheer- 
ful habits of mind. 

In the division of time it is an excellent rule 
for adults to keep it as much as possible in 
large masses, not giving a quarter of an hour 
to one occupation and a quarter to another, 
but giving three, four, or five hours to one 
thing at a time. In the case of children an 
opposite practice should be followed ; they are 
able to change their attention from one sub- 
ject to another much more easily than we can, 
whilst at the same time they cannot fix their 
minds for very long without cerebral fatigue 
leading to temporary incapacity. The custom 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 483 

prevalent in schools, of making the boys learn 
several different things in the course of the 
day, is therefor s founded upon the necessities 
of the boy-nature, though most grown men 
would find that changes so frequent would, 
for them, have all the inconveniences of inter- 
ruption. To boys they come as relief , to men 
as interruption. The reason is that the phys- 
ical condition of the brain is different in the 
two cases; but in our loose way of talking 
about these things we may say that the boy's 
ideas are superficial, like the plates and dishes 
on the surface of a dinner-table, which may 
be rapidly changed without inconvenience, 
whereas the man's ideas, having all struck 
root down to the very depths of his nature, are 
more like the plants in a garden, which can- 
not be removed without a temporary loss both 
of vigor and of beauty, and the loss cannot be 
instantaneously repaired. For a man to do his 
work thoroughly well, it is necessary that he 
should dwell in it long enough at a time to get 
all the powers of his mind fully under com- 
mand with reference to the particular work 
in hand, and he cannot do this without tuning 
his whole mind to the given diajmson, as a 
tuner tunes a piano. Some men can tune 
their minds more rapidly, as violins are tuned, 
and this faculty may to a certain extent be ac- 
quired by efforts of the will very frequently 
repeated. Cuvier had this faculty in the most 
eminent degree. One of his biographers says : 
" His extreme facility for study, and of direct- 
ing all the powers of his mind to diverse occu- 



484 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

pations of study, from one quarter of an hour 
to another, was one of the most extraordinary- 
qualities of his mind." The Duke of Welling- 
ton also cultivated the habit (inestimably val- 
uable to a public man) of directing the whole 
of his attention to the subject under consider- 
ation, however frequently that subject might 
happen to be changed. But although men of 
exceptional power and very exceptional flexi- 
bility may do this with apparent impunity, 
that still depends very much on the nature of 
the occupation. There are some occupations 
which are not incompatible with a fragmen- 
tary division of time, because these occupa- 
tions are themselves fragmentary. For ex- 
ample, you may study languages in phrase- 
books during very small spaces of time, be- 
cause the complete phrase is in itself a very 
small thing, but you could not so easily break 
and resume the thread of an elaborate argu- 
ment. I suspect that though Cuvier appeared 
to his contemporaries a man remarkably able 
to leave off and resume his work at will, he 
must have taken care to do work that would 
bear interruption at those times when he knew 
himself to be most liable to it. And although, 
when a man's time is unavoidably broken up 
into fragments, no talent of a merely auxil- 
iary kind can be more precious than that of 
turning each of those fragments to advan- 
tage, it is still true that he whose time is at 
his own disposal will do his work most calmly, 
"most deliberately, and therefore on the whole 
most thoroughly and perfectly, when he 



IN TEL L E( VI VI L U YVi I F/S li '8. 4B5 

keeps it in fine masses. The mere knowledge 
that you have three or four clear hours before 
you is in itself a great help to the spirit of 
thoroughness, both in study and in production. 
It is agreeable too, when the sitting has come 
to an end, to perceive that a definite advance 
is the result of it, and advance in anything is 
scarcely perceptible in less than three or four 
hours. 

There are several pursuits which cannot be 
followed in fragments of time, on account of 
the necessary preparations. It is useless to 
begin oil-painting unless you have full time 
to set your palette properly, to get your can- 
vas into a proper state for working upon, to 
pose the model as you wish, and settle down 
to work with everything as it ought to be, 
In landscape-painting from nature you re- 
quire the time to go to the selected place, and 
after your arrival to arrange your materials 
and shelter yourself from the sun. In scien- 
tific pursuits the preparations are usually at 
least equally elaborate, and often much more 
so. To prepare for an experiment, or for a 
dissection, takes time which we feel to be dis- 
proportionate when it leaves too little for the 
scientific work itself. It is for this reason 
more f requently than for any other that ama- 
teurs who begin in enthusiasm, so commonly, 
after awhile, abandon the objects of their 
pursuit. 

There is a kind of slavery to which no 
really intellectual man would ever volunta- 
rily submit, a minute obedience to the clock. 



486 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Very conscientious people often impose upon 
themselves this sort of slavery. A person 
who has hampered himself with rules of this 
kind will take up a certain book, for instance, 
when the clock strikes nine, and begin at yes- 
terday's mark, perhaps in the middle of a 
paragraph. Then he will read with great 
steadiness till a quarter-past nine, and exactly 
on the. instant when the minute-hand gets op- 
posite the dot, he will shut his book, however 
much the passage may happen to interest him. 
It was in allusion to good people of this kind 
that Sir Walter Scott said he had never 
known a man of genius who could be per- 
fectly regular in his habits, whilst he had 
known many blockheads who could. It is 
easy to see that a minute obedience to the 
clock is unintellectual in its very nature, for 
the intellect is not a piece of mechanism as a 
clock is, and cannot easily be made to act 
like one. There may be perfect correspond- 
ence between the locomotives and the clocks 
on a railway, for if the clocks are pieces of 
mechanism the locomotives are so likewise, 
but the intellect always needs a certain loose- 
ness and latitude as to time. Very broad 
rules are the best, such as "Write in the 
morning, read in the afternoon, see friends in 
the evening," or else " Study one day and pro- 
duce another, alternately," or even "Work 
one week and see the world another week, 
alternately." 

There is a fretting habit, much recom- 
mended by men of business and of great use 



INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS. 487 

to them, of writing the evening before the 
duties of the day in a book of agenda. If 
this is done at all by intellectual men with 
reference to their pursuits, it ought to be 
done in a very broad, loose way, never mi- 
nutely. An intellectual worker ought never 
to make it a matter of conscience (in intel- 
lectual labor) to do a predetermined quantity 
of little things. This sort of conscientiousness 
frets and worries, and is the enemy of all se- 
renity of thought. 



PART XL 

TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 



LETTER I. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF ABILITY AND CULT- 
URE WHO HAD NOT DECIDED ABOUT HIS PRO* 
FESSION. 

The Church — Felicities and advantages of the clerical profes- 
si ^n— Its elevated ideal— That it is favorable o noble stud- 
ies—French priests and English Clergymen— The profes- 
sional point of view — Difficulty of disinterested thinking- 
Colored light— Want of strict accuracy — Quotation from a 
sermon -The drawback to the clerical life— Provisional 
nature of intellectual conclusions— The legal profession — 
That it affords gratification to the intellectual powers- 
Want of intellectual disinterestedness in lawyers — Their 
absorption in professional life — Anecdote of a London 
lawyer — Superiority of lawyers in their sense of affairs — 
Medicine— The study of it a fine preparation for the intel- 
lectual life— Social rise of medical men coincident with the 
mental progress of communities— Their probable future 
influence on education — The heroic side of their profes- 
sion—The military and naval professions — Bad effect of 
the privation of solitude — Interruption— Anecdote of Cu- 
vier— The fine arts— In what way they are favorable to 
thought— Intellectual leisure of artists— Reasoning artists 
—Sciences included in the fine arts. 

It may be taken for granted that to a mind 
constituted as yours is, no profession will be 
satisfactory which does not afford free play 
to the intellectual powers. You might no 



TRADES AKJ) PROFESSIONS. 488 

doubt exercise resolution enough to bind 
yourself down to uncongenial work for a 
term of years, but it would be with the inten- 
tion of retiring as soon as you had realized a 
competency. The happiest life is that which 
constantly exercises and educates what is 
best in us. 

You had thoughts, at one time, of the 
Church, and the Church would have suited 
you in many respects very happily, yet not, 
I think, in all respects. The clerical profes- 
sion has many great felicities and advan- 
tages : it educates and develops, by its mild but 
regular discipline, much of our higher nature ; 
it sets before us an elevated ideal, worth striv- 
ing for at the cost of every sacrifice but one, 
of which I intend to say something farther 
on ; and it offers just that mixture of public 
and private life which best affords the alter- 
nation of activity and rest. It is an existence 
in many respects most favorable to the no- 
blest studies. It offers the happiest combina- 
tion of duties that satisfy the conscience with 
leisure for the cultivation of the mind; it 
gives the easiest access to all classes of society, 
providing for the parson himself a neutral 
and independent position, so safe that he need 
only conduct himself properly to preserve it. 
How superior, from the intellectual point of 
view, is this liberal existence to the narrower 
one of a French care de campagne ! I cer- 
tainly think that if a good cure has an excep- 
tional genius for sancitity, his chances of be- 
coming a perfect saint are better than those 



490 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of a comfortable English incumbent, who is 
at the same time a gentleman and man of the 
world, but he is not nearly so well situated 
for leading the intellectual life. Our own 
clergy have a sort of middle position between 
the cure and the layman, which without at 
all interfering with their spiritual vocation, 
makes them better judges of the character of 
laymen and more completely in sympathy 
with it. 

And yet, although the life of a clergyman 
is favorable to culture in many ways, it is 
not wholly favorable to it. There exists, in 
clerical thinking generally, just one restric- 
tion or impediment, which is the overwhelm- 
ing importance of the professional point of 
view. Of all the professions the ecclesiasti- 
cal one is that which most decidedly and most 
constantly affects the judgment of persons 
and opinions. It is peculiarly difficult for a 
clergyman to attain disinterestedness in his 
thinking, to accept truth just as it may hap- 
pen to present itself, without passionately de- 
siring that one doctrine may turn out to be 
strong in evidence and another unsupported. 
And so we find the clergy, as a class, anxious 
rather to discover aids to faith, than the sim- 
ple scientific truth ; and the more the special 
priestly character develops itself, the more 
we find them disposed to use their intellects 
for the triumph of principles that are decided 
upon beforehand. Sometimes this disposition 
leads them to see the acts of laymen in a col- 
ored light and to speak of them without strict 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 491 

accuracy. Here is an example of what I 
mean. A Jesuit priest preached a sermon in 
London very recently, in which he said that 
u in Germany, France, Italy, and England, 
gigantic efforts were being made to rob Chris- 
tian children of the blessing of a Christian 
education." "Herod, though dead,'' the 
preacher continued, ' ' has left his mantle be- 
hind him; and I wish that the soldiers of 
Herod in those countries would plunge their 
swords into the breasts of little children while 
they were innocent, rather than have their 
souls destroyed by means of an unchristian 
and uncatholic education. " No doubt this is 
very earnest and sincere, but it is not accu- 
rate and just thinking. The laity in the 
countries the preacher mentioned have cer- 
tainly a strong tendency to exclude theology 
from State schools, because it is so difficult 
for a modern State to impose any kind of the- 
ological teaching without injustice to minori- 
ties; but the laity do not desire to deprive 
children of whatever instruction may be 
given to them by the clergy of their re- 
spective communions. May I add, that to 
the mind of a layman it seems a sanguinary 
desire that all little children should have 
swords plunged into their breasts rather than 
be taught in schools not clerically directed? 
The exact truth is, that the powerful lay ele- 
ment is certainly separating itself from the 
ecclesiastical element all over Europe, be- 
cause it is found by experience that the two 
have a great and increasing difficulty m work- 



492 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ing harmoniously together, but the ecclesias- 
tical element is detached and not destroyed. 
The quotation I have just made is in itself a 
sufficient illustration of that very peculiarity 
in the more exalted ecclesiastical tempera- 
ment, which often makes it so difficult for 
priests and governments, in these times, to 
get on comfortably together. Here is first a 
very inaccurate statement, and then an out- 
burst of most passionate feeling, whereas the 
intellect desires the strictest truth and the 
most complete disinterestedness. As the tem- 
per of the laity becomes more and more intel- 
lectual (and that is the direction of its move- 
ment), the sacerdotal habit will become more 
and more remote from it. 

The clerical life has many strong attrac- 
tions for the intellectual, and just one draw- 
back to counterbalance them. It offers tran- 
quillity, shelter from the interruptions and 
anxieties of the more active professions, and 
powerful means of influence ready to hand ; 
but it is compatible with intellectual freedom 
and with the satisfaction of the conscience, 
only just so long as the priest really remains a 
believer in the details of his religion. Now, al- 
though we may reasonably hope to retain the 
chief elements of our belief, although what a 
man believes at twenty-five is always what 
he will most probably believe at fifty, still, in 
an age when free inquiry is the common 
habit of cultivated people of our sex, we may 
well hesitate before taking upon ourselves 
any formal engagement for the future, es- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 493 

pecially in matters of detail. The intellectual 
spirit does not regard its conclusions as being 
at any time final, but always provisional ; we 
hold what we believe to be the truth until we 
can replace it by some more perfect truth, 
but cannot tell how much of to-day's beliefs 
to-morrow will retain or reject. It may be 
observed, however, that the regular perform- 
ance of priestly functions is in itself a great 
help to permanence in belief by connecting it 
closely with practical habit, so that the clergy 
do really and honestly often retain through 
life their hold on early beliefs which as lay- 
men they might have lost. 

The profession of the law provides ample 
opportunities for a critical intellect with a 
strong love of accuracy and a robust capac- 
ity for hard work, besides which it is the best 
of worldly educations. Some lawyers love 
their work as passionately as artists do 
theirs, others dislike it very heartily, most of 
them seem to take it as a simple business to 
be done for daily bread. Lawyers whose 
heart is in their work are invariably men of 
superior ability, which proves that there is 
something in it that affords gratification to 
the intellectual powers. However, in speak- 
ing of lawyers, I feel ignorant and on the out- 
side, because their profession is one of which 
the interior feelings can be known to no one 
who has not practised. One thing seems 
clear, they get the habit of employing the 
whole strength and energy of their minds for 
especial and temporary ends, the purpose be- 



494 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

ing the service of the client, certainly not the 
revelation of pure truth. Hence, although 
they become very acute, and keen judges of 
that side of human nature which they habitu- 
ally see (not the best side), they are not more 
disinterested than clergymen.* Sometimes 
they take up some study outside of their pro- 
fession and follow it disinterestedly, but this 
is rare. A busy lawyer is much more likely 
than a clergyman to become entirely absorbed 
in his professional life, because it requires so 
much more intellectual exertion. I remember 
asking a very clever lawyer who lived in Lon- 
don, whether he ever visited an exhibition of 
pictures, and he answered me by the counter- 
inquiry whether I had read Chitty on Con- 
tracts, Collier on Partnerships, Taylor on Ev- 
idence, Cruse's Digest, or Smith's Mercantile 
Law? This seemed to me at the time a good 
instance of the way a professional habit may 
narrow one's views of things, for these law- 
books were written for lawyers alone, whilst 
the picture exhibitions were intended for the 
public generally. My friend's answer would 
have been more to the point if I had inquired 
whether he had read Linton on Colors, and 
Burnet on Chiaroscuro. 

There is just one situation in which we all 
may feel for a short time as lawyers feel ha- 
bitually. Suppose that two inexperienced 
players sit down to a game of chess, and that 

* The word " disinterested " is used here in the sense ex- 
. plained in Fart II. Letter III, . 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS, 495 

each is backed by a clever person who is con- 
stantly giving him hints. The two backers 
represent the lawyers, and the players repre- 
sent their clients. There is not much disin- 
terested thought in a situation of this kind, 
but there is a strong stimulus to acute- 
ness. 

I think that lawyers are often superior to 
philosophers in their sense of what is relatively 
important in human affairs with reference to 
' limited spaces of time, such as half a century. 
They especially know the enormous impor- 
tance of custom, which the speculative mind 
very readily forgets, and they have in the 
highest degree that peculiar sense which fits 
men for dealing with others in the affairs of 
ordinary life. In this respect they are remark- 
ably superior to clergymen, and superior also 
to artists and men of science. 

The profession of medicine is, of all fairly 
lucrative professions, the one best suited to the 
development of the intellectual life. Having 
to deal continually with science, being con- 
stantly engaged in following and observing 
the operation of natural laws, it produces a 
sense of the working of those laws which pre- 
pares the mind for bold and original specula- 
tion, and a reliance upon their unfailing regu- 
larity, which gives it great firmness and as- 
surance. A medical education is the best 
possible preparation for philosophical pur- 
suits, because it gives them a solid basis in 
the ascertainable. The estimation in which 
these studies are held is an accurate meter of 



406 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

the intellectual advancement of a community. 
When the priest is reverenced as a being above 
ordinary humanity, and the physician slightly 
esteemed, the condition of society is sure to 
be that of comparative ignorance and barba- 
rism ; and it is one of several signs which in- 
dicate barbarian feeling in our own aristocra- 
cy, that it has a contempt for the study of 
medicine. The progress of society towards 
enlightenment is marked by the steady social 
rise of the surgeon and the physician, a rise 
which still continues, even in Western Europe. 
It is probable that before very long the medi- 
cal profession will exercise a powerful influ- 
ence upon general education, and take an 
active share in it. There are very strong rea- 
sons for the opinion that schoolmasters edu- 
cated in medicine Avould be peculiarly well 
qualified to train both body and mind for a 
vigorous and active manhood. An immense 
advantage, even from the intellectual point of 
view, in the pursuit of medicine and surgery, 
is that they supply a discipline in mental 
heroism. Other professions do this also, but 
not to the same degree. The combination of 
an accurate training in positive science with 
the habitual contempt of danger and contem- 
plation of suffering and death, is the finest 
possible preparation for noble studies and 
arduous discoveries. I ought to add, however, 
that medical men in the provinces, when they 
have not any special enthusiasm for their 
work, seem peculiarly liable to the deadening 
influences of routine, and easily fall behind 



TUAMJS AND PROFESSIONS. 497 

their age. The medical periodicals provide 
the best remedy for this. 

The military and naval professions are too 
active, and too much bound to obedience in 
their activity, for the highest intellectual pur- 
suits ; but their greatest evil in this respect is 
the continual privation of solitude, and the 
frequency of interruption. A soldier's life in 
the higher ranks, when there is great respon- 
sibility and the necessity for personal decision, 
undoubtedly leads to the most brilliant em- 
ployment of the mental powers, and develops 
a manliness of character which is often of the 
greatest use in intellectual work; so that a 
man of science may find his force augmented, 
and better under control, for having passed 
through a military experience ; but the life of 
barracks and camps is destructive to contin- 
uity of thinking. The incompatibility be- 
comes strikingly manifest when we reflect how 
impossible it would have been for Ney or Mas- 
sena to do the work of Cuvier or Comte. 
Cuvier even declined to accompany the expe- 
dition to Egypt, notwithstanding the pros- 
pects of advantage that it offered. The rea- 
son he gave for this refusal was, that he 
could do more for science in the tranquillity 
of the Jardin des Plantes. He was a strict 
economist of time, and dreaded the loss of it 
involved in following an army, even though 
his mission would have been purely scientific. 
How much more would Cuvier have dreaded 
the interruptions of a really military exist- 
ence ! It is these interruptions, and not any 
32 



498 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

want of natural ability, that are the true ex- 
planation of the intellectual poverty which 
characterizes the military profession. Of all 
the liberal professions it is the least studious. 
Let me say a word in conclusion about the 
practical pursuit of the fine arts. Painters 
are often remarkable for pleasant conversa- 
tional power, and a degree of intelligence 
strikingly superior to their literary culture. 
This is because the processes of their art can 
be followed, at least under certain circum- 
stances, by the exercise of hand and eye, 
directed merely by artistic taste and experi- 
ence, whilst the intellect is left free either for 
reflection or conversation. Rubens liked to 
be read to when he painted; many artists 
like to hear people talk, and to take a share 
occasionally in the conversation. The truth 
is that artists, even when they work very as- 
siduously, do in fact enjoy great spaces of 
intellectual leisure, and often profit by them. 
Fainting itself is also a fine discipline for 
some of the best faculties of the mind, though 
it is well known that the most gifted artists 
think least about their art. Still there is a 
large class of painters, including many emi- 
nent ones, who proceed intellectually in the 
execution of their works, who reason them 
out philosophically step by step, and exercise 
a continual criticism upon their manual labor 
as it goes forward. I find, as I know art and 
artists better, that this class is more numerous 
than is commonly suspected, and that the 
charming effects which we believe to be the 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 499 

result Of pure inspiration have often been 
elaborately reasoned out like a problem in 
mathematics. We are very apt to forget that 
art includes a great science, the science of 
natural appearances, and that the technical 
work of painters and engravers cannot go 
forward safely without the prof oundest knowl- 
edge of certain delicate materials, this being 
also a science, and a difficult one. The com- 
mon tendency is to underrate (from ignorance) 
what is intellectual in the practice of the 
fine arts; and yet the artists of past times 
have left evidence enough that they thought 
about art, and thought deeply. Artists are 
often illiterate ; but it is possible to be at the 
same time illiterate and intellectual; as we 
see frequent examples of book-learning in 
people who have scarcely a single idea of 
their own. 



LETTER II. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD LITERARY 
AND ARTISTIC TASTES, BUT NO PROFESSION. 

The world only recognizes performance— Uselessness of botch* 
work— Vastness of the interval between botch- work and 
handicraft — Delusions of the well-to-do — Quotation from 
Charles Lever — Indifference, and even contempt, for skill 
— Moral contempt for skill — The contempt which comes 
from the pride of knowledge — Intellectual value of skill 
and of professional discipline. 

It is not a graceful thing for me to say, nor 
pleasant for you to hear, that what you have 
done hitherto in art and literature is neither 



500 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of any value in itself nor likely to lead you 
to that which is truly and permanently satis- 
fying. I believe you have natural ability, 
though it would not be easy for any critic to 
measure its degree when it has never been 
developed by properly-directed work. Most 
critics would probably err on the unfavorable 
side, for we are easily blind to powers that 
are little more than latent. To see anything 
encouraging in your present performance, it 
would need the sympathy and intelligence of 
the American sculptor Greenough, of whom 
it was said that ! * his recognition was not lim- 
ited to achievement, but extended to latent 
powers." The world, however, recognizes 
nothing short of performance, because the 
performance is what it needs, and promises 
are of no use to it. 

In this rough justice of the world there is a 
natural distribution of rewards. You will be 
paid, in fame and money, for all excellent 
work ; and you will be paid, in money, though 
not in fame, for all work that is even simply 
good, provided it be of a kind that the w orld 
needs, or fancies that it needs. But you will 
never be paid at all for botch- w^ork, neither 
in money nor in fame, nor by your own in- 
ward approval. 

For we all of us either know that our botch- 
work is worthless, or else have serious mis- 
givings about it. That which is less common- 
ly realized by those who have not undergone 
the test of professional labor is the vastness 
of the interval that separates botch-work 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS, 501 

from handicraft, and the difficulty of getting 
over it. " There are few delusions,"' Charles 
Lever said ifl ''The Bramleighs/' "morfe 
common with well-to-do people than the be- 
lief that if 4 put to it' they could earn their 
own livelihood in a, variety of ways. Almost 
every man has some two or three or more ac- 
complishments which he fancies would be 
quite adequate to his support; and remem- 
bering with what success the exercise of 
these gifts has ever been hailed in the society 
of his friends, he has a sort of generous dis- 
like to be obliged to eclipse some poor drudge 
of a professional, who, of course, will be con- 
signed to utter oblivion after his own per- 
formance. Augustus Bramleigh was certain- 
ly not a conceited or a vain man, and yet he 
had often in his palmy days imagined how 
easy it would be for him to provide for his 
own support. He was something of a musi- 
cian ; he sang pleasingly ; he drew a little : he 
knew something of three or four modern lan- 
guages; he had that sort of smattering ac- 
quaintance with questions of religion, poli- 
tics, and literature which the world calls be- 
ing ' well-informed, ' and yet nothing short of 
the grave necessity revealed to him that tow- 
ards the object of securing a livelihood a 
cobbler in his bulk was out-and-out his mas- 
ter. The world has no need of the man of 
small acquirements, and would rather have 
its shoes mended by the veriest botch of a 
professional than by the cleverest amateur 
that ever studied a Greek sandal/' 



502 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Something of this illusion, which Charles 
Lever has touched so truly, may be due to a 
peculiarity of the English mind in its present 
(not quite satisfactory) stage of development, 
a peculiarity which I am not the first to point 
out, since it has been already indicated by 
Mr. Pointer, the distinguished artist; and I 
think that this peculiarity is to be found in 
very great force, perhaps in greater force than 
elsewhere, in that well-to-do English middle 
class in which you have been born and edu- 
cated. It consists in a sort of indifference to 
skill of all kinds, which passes into something 
not very far from active contempt when a 
call is made for attention, recognition, admi- 
ration. The source of this feeling will proba- 
bly be found in the inordinate respect for 
wealth, between which and highly developed 
personal skill, in anything, there is a certain 
antagonism or incompatibility. The men of 
real skill are almost always men who earn 
their living by their skill. The feeling of the 
middle-class capitalists concerning the skilful 
man may be expressed, not unjustly, as fol- 
lows : ' ' Yes, he is very clever ; he may well 
be clever — it is his trade ; he gets his living 
by it." This is held to exonerate us from the 
burden of admiration, and there is not any se- 
rious interest in the achievements of human 
endeavor as evidence of the marvellous natural 
endowments and capabilities of the human 
organism. In some minds the indifference to 
skill is more active and grows into very real, 
though not openly expressed contempt. This 



TRADES A XI) PROFESSION S. 508 

contempt is partly moral. The skilful man 
always rejoices in his skill with a heaven-be- 
stowed joy and delight — one of the purest and 
most divine pleasures given by God to man — 
an encouragement to labor, and a reward, the 
best reward, after his arduous apprenticeship. 
But there is a sour and severe spirit, hating 
all innocent pleasures, which despises the 
gladness of the skilful as so much personal 
vanity. 

There is also the contempt for skill which 
comes from the pride of knowledge. To at- 
tain skill in anything a degree of application 
is necessary which absorbs more time than 
the acquisition of knowledge about the thing, 
so that the remarkably skilful man is not 
likely to be the erudite man. There have 
been instances of men who possessed both 
skill and learning. The American sculptor 
Greenough, and the English painter Dyce, 
were at the same time both eminently skilful 
in their craft and eminently learned out of 
it ; but the combination is very rare. There- 
fore the possession of skill has come to be con- 
sidered presumptive evidence of a want of 
general information. 

But the truth is that professional skill is 
knowledge tested and perfected by practical 
application, and therefore has a great intel- 
lectual value. Professional life is to private 
individuals what active warfare is to a mili- 
tary state. It brings to light every deficiency, 
and reveals our truest needs. And therefore 
it seems to me a matter for regret that you 



504 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

should pass your existence in irresponsible 
privacy, and not have your attainments 
tested by the exigencies of some professional 
career. The discipline which such a career 
affords, and which no private resolution can 
ever adequately replace, may be all that is 
wanting to your development. 



LETTER III. 

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO WISHED TO DE- 
VOTE HIMSELF TO LITERATURE AS A PROFES- 
SION. 

Byron's vexation at the idea of poetry being considered a 
profession— Buffon could not bear to be called a natural- 
ist — Cuvier would not be called a Hellenist— Faraday's 
life not professional — The intellectual life frequently pro- 
tected by professions outside of it— Prof essional work 
ought to be plain business work— Michelet's account of 
the incubation of a book — Necessity for too great rapidity 
of production in professional literature — It does not pay to 
do your best— Journalism and magazine-writing— Illustra- 
tion from a sister art— Privilege of an author to be allowed 
to write little. 

Do you remember how put out Byron was 
when some reviewer spoke of Wordsworth as 
being "at the head of the profession"? By- 
ron's vexation was not entirely due to jeal- 
ousy of Wordsworth, though that may have 
had something to do with it, nor was it due 
either to an aristocratic dislike of being in a 
' ' profession " himself, though this feeling may 
have had a certain influence; it was due to 
a proper sense of the dignity of the intellect- 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 505 

ual life. Buff on could not bear to be called a 
"naturalist," and Cuvier in the same way 
disliked the title of Hellenist, because it 
sounded professional : he said that though he 
knew more Greek than all the Academy he 
was not a Hellenist as Gail was, because he 
did not live by Greek. 

Now, if this feeling had arisen merely from 
a dislike to having it supposed that one is 
obliged to earn his own living, it would have 
been a contemptibly vulgar sentiment, who- 
ever professed it. Nothing can be more hon- 
orable to a man than to earn his bread by 
honest industry of any kind, whether it be 
manual or intellectual, and still I feel with 
Byron, and Buffon, and Cuvier, that the great 
instruments of the world's intellectual culture 
ought not to be, in the ordinary sense, profes- 
sions. Byron said that poetry, as he under- 
stood it, was "an art, an attribute," but not 
what is understood by a " profession. " Surely 
the same is true of all the highest intellectual 
work, in whatever kind. You could scarcely 
consider Faraday's life to be what is com- 
monly understood by a professional life. Tyn - 
dall says that if Faraday had chosen to em- 
ploy his talents in analytical chemistry he 
might have realized a fortune of 150,000Z. 
Now that would have been a professional ex- 
istence ; but the career which Faraday chose 
(happily for science) was not professional, but 
intellectual. The distinction between the 
professional and the intellectual lives is per- 
fectly clear in my own mind, and therefore I 



506 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

ought to be able to express it "clearly. Let 
me make the attempt. 

The purpose of a profession, of a profession 
pure and simple, is to turn knowledge and 
talent to pecuniary profit. On the other hand, 
the purpose of cultivated men, or men of gen- 
ius, who work in an unprofessional spirit, is 
to increase knowledge, or make it more -accu- 
rate, or else simply to give free exercise to 
high faculties which demand it. The distinc- 
tion is so clear and trenchant that most intel- 
lectual men, whose private fortunes are not 
large, prefer to have a profession distinct 
from their higher intellectual work, in order 
to secure the perfect independence of the lat- 
ter. Mr. Smiles, in his valuable book on 
" Character,-' gives a list of eminent intellect- 
ual men who have pursued real professional 
avocations of various kinds separately from 
their literary or scientific activity, and he 
mentions an observation of Gilford's which is 
much to my present purpose: — u Gilford, the 
editor of the Quarterly, who knew the drudg- 
ery of writing for a living, once observed that 
4 a single hour of composition, won from the 
business of the day, is worth more than the 
whole day's toil of him who works at the 
trade of literature : in the one case, the spirit 
comes joyfully to refresh itself, like a hart to 
the water-brooks ; in the other, it pursues its 
miserable way, panting and jaded, with the 
dogs of hunger and necessity behind.'" So 
Coleridge said that " three hours of leisure, 
unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked 



TBA&E8 AND PROFESSIONS. 507 

forward to with delight as a change and rec- 
reation, will suffice to realize in literature a 
larger product of what is truly genial than 
weeks of compulsion. " Coleridge's idea of a 
profession was, that it should be " some regu- 
lar employment which could be carried on so 
far mechanically, that an average quantum 
only of health, spirits, and intellectual exer- 
tion are requisite to its faithful discharge. "' 
Without in the least desiring to undervalue 
good professional work of any kind, I may 
observe that, to be truly professional, it ought 
to be always at command, and therefore that 
the average power of the man's intellect, not 
his rare flashes of highest intellectual illumi- 
nation, ought to suffice for it. Professional 
work ought always to be plain business work, 
requiring know ledge and skill, but not any 
effort of genius. For example, in medicine, it 
is professional work to prescribe a dose or am- 
putate a limb, but not to discover the nervous 
system or the circulation of the blood. 

If literature paid sufficiently well to allow 
it, a literary man might very wisely consider 
study to be his profession, and not production. 
He would then study regularly, say, six 
hours a day, and write when he had some- 
thing to say, and really wanted to express it. 
His book, when it came out, would have had 
time to be properly hatched, and would prob- 
ably have natural life in it. Michelet says of, 
one of his books: "Cette oeuvre a du moins 
le cai*actere d'etre venue comme vient toute 
vraie creation vivante. Elle s'est faitfc a la 



508 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. , 

chaleur dune douce incubation." * It would 
be impossible, in so short a space, to give a 
more accurate description of the natural man- 
ner in which a book comes into existence. A 
book ought always to be fi fait a la chaleur 
d'une douce incubation." 

But when you make- a profession of litera- 
ture this is what you can hardly ever get 
leave to do. Literary men require to see 
something of the world ; they can hardly be 
hermits, and the world cannot be seen with- 
out a constant running expenditure, which at 
the end of the year represents an income. 
Men of culture and refinement really cannot 
live like very poor people without deteriorat- 
ing in refinement, and falling behind in 
knowledge of the world. When they are 
married, and have families, they can hardly 
let their families live differently from them- 
selves ; so that there are the usual expenses of 
the English professional classes to be met, and 
these are heavy when they have to be got out 
of the profits of literature. The consequence 
is, that if a book is to be written prudently it 
must be written quickly, and with the least 
amount of preparatory labor that can possibly 
be made to serve. This is very different from 
the "douce incubation" of Michelet. Gold- 
smith said of hack-writing, that it was diffi- 
cult to imagine a combination more prejudi- 
cial to taste than that of the author whose in- 

* lt This work has at any rate the character of having come 
into the world like every really living creation. It has been 
produced by the heat of a gentle incubation/* 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 509 

terest it is to write as much as possible, and 
the bookseller, whose interest it is to pay as 
little as possible. The condition of authors 
has no doubt greatly improved since Gold- 
smith's time, but still the fact remains that 
the most careful and finished writing, requir- 
ing extensive preparatory study, is a luxury 
in which the professional writer can only in- 
dulge himself at great risk. Careful writing 
does, no doubt, occasionally pay for the time 
it costs ; but such writing is more commonly 
done by men who are either independent by 
fortune, or who make themselves, as authors, 
independent by the pursuit of some other pro- 
fession, than by regular men of letters w^hose 
whole income is derived from their inkstands. 
And when, by way of exception, the hack- 
writer does produce very highly -finished and 
concentrated work, based upon an elaborate 
foundation of hard study, that work is sel- 
dom professional in the strictest sense, but is 
a labor of love, outside the hasty journalism 
or magazine-writing that wins his daily bread. 
In cases of this kind it is clear that the best 
work is not done as a regular part of profes- 
sional duty, and that the author might as well 
earn his bread in some other calling, if he still 
had the same amount of leisure for the com- 
position of real literature. 

The fault I find with writing as a profession 
is that it does not pay to do your best. I don't 
mean to insinuate that downright slovenly or 
careless work is the most profitable; but Ido 
mean to say that any high degree of eonscien* 



510 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. , 

tiousness, especially in the way of study and 
research, is a direct injury to the professional 
vreiters purse. Suppose, for example, that he 
is engaged in reviewing a book, and is to get 
3Z. 10s. for the review when it is written. If 
by the accident of previous accumulation his 
knowledge is already fully equal to the de- 
mand upon it, the review may be written rap- 
idly, and the day's work will have been a prof- 
itable one; but if, on the other hand, it is nec- 
essary to consult several authorities, to make 
some laborious researches, then the reviewer is 
placed in a dilemma between literary thor- 
oughness and duty to his family. He cannot 
spend a week in reading up a subject for the 
sum of SI. 10s. Is it not much easier to string 
together a few phrases which will effectually 
hide his ignorance from everybody but the 
half-dozen enthusiasts who have mastered the 
subject of the book? It is strange that the 
professional pursuit of literature should be a 
direct discouragement to study ; yet it is so. 
There are hack-writers who study, and they 
deserve much honor for doing so, since the 
temptations the other way are always so press- 
ing and immediate. Sainte-Beuve was a true 
student, loving literature for its own sake, and 
preparing for his articles with a diligence rare 
in the profession. But he was scarcely a hack- 
writer, having a modest independency, and 
living besides with the quiet frugality of a 
bachelor. 

The truth seems to be that literature of the 
highest kind, can only in the most exceptional 



TBADES AND PROFESSIONS. 511 

cases be made a profession, yet that a skilful 
writer may use his pen professionally if he 
chooses. The production of the printed talk 
of the day is a profession, requiring no more 
than average ability, and the tone and temper 
of ordinary educated men. The outcome of 
it is journalism and magazine- writing ; and 
now let me say a word or two about these. 

The highest kind of journalism is very well 
done in England ; the men who do it are often 
either highly educated, or richly gifted by 
nature, or both. The practice of journalism 
is useful to an author in giving him a degree 
of readiness and rapidity, a skill in turning 
his materials to immediate account, and a 
power of presenting one or two points effec- 
tively, which may often be valuable in litera- 
ture of a more permanent order. The danger 
of it may be illustrated by a reference to a 
sister art. I was in the studio of an English 
landscape-painter when some pictures arrived 
from an artist in the country to go along with 
his own to one of the exhibitions. They were 
all very pretty and very clever — indeed, so 
clever were they, that their cleverness was al- 
most offensive — and so long as they were 
looked at by themselves, the brilliance of them 
was rather dazzling. But the instant they 
were placed by the side of thoroughly careful 
and earnest work, it became strikingly evi- 
dent that they had been painted hastily, and 
would be almost immediately exhausted by 
the purchaser. Now these pictures were the 
journalism of painting; and my friend told 



512 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

me that when once an artist has got into the 
habit of doing hasty work like that, he sel- 
dom acquires better habits afterwards. 

Professional writers who follow journalism 
for its immediate profits, are liable in like man- 
ner to retain the habit of diffuseness in litera- 
ture which ought to be more finished and more 
concentrated. Therefore, although journal- 
ism is a good teacher of promptitude and decis- 
ion, it often spoils a hand for higher literature 
by incapacitating it for perfect finish ; and it is 
better for a writer who has ambition to write 
little, but always his best, than to dilute him- 
self in daily columns. One of the greatest priv- 
ileges which an author can aspire to is to be al- 
lowed to write little, and that is a privilege 
which the professional writer does not enjoy, 
except in such rare instances as that of Ten- 
nyson, whose careful finish is as prudent in 
the professional sense as it is satisfactory to 
the scrupulous fastidiousness of the artist. 



TRADES AM) FXOFE&iSIOXX. 513 



LETTER IV. 

TO AN ENERGETIC AND SUCCESSFUL COTTON MAN- 
UFACTURER. 

Two classes in their lower grades inevitably hostile— The spir- 
itual and temporal powers — The functions of both not 
easily exercised by the same person— Humboldt, Faraday, 
Livingstone— The difficulty about time— Limits to the en- 
ergy of the individual— Jealousy between the classes- 
That this jealousy ought not to exist^-Some of the sci' 
ences based upon an industrial development— The work 
of the intellectual class absolutely necessaiy in a highly 
civilized community— That it grows in numbers and in- 
fluence side by side with the industrial class. 

Our last conversation together, in the pri- 
vacy of your splendid new drawing-room after 
the guests had gone away and the music had 
ceased for the night, left me under the im- 
pression that we had not arrived at a perfect 
understanding of each other. This was due 
in a great measure to my unfortunate inca- 
pacity for expressing anything exactly by 
spoken words. The constant habit of writing, 
which permits a leisurely selection from one's 
ideas, is often very unfavorable to readiness 
in conversation. Will you permit me, then, 
to go over the ground we traversed, this time 
in my own way, pen in hand? 

We represent, you and I, two classes which 
in their lower grades are inevitably hostile ; 
but the superior members of these classes 
ought not to feel any hostility, since both are 
equally necessary to the world. We are, in 
truth, the spiritual and the temporal powers 
33 



514 THE INTELLECTUAL LIVE. 

in their most modern form. The chief of in* 
dustry and the man of letters stand to-day in 
the same relation to each other and to man- 
kind as the baron and bishop of the Middle 
Ages. We are no 4 ^ recognized, either of us, by 
formally conferred titles, we are both held to 
be somewhat intrusive by the representatives 
of a former order of things, and there is, or 
was until very lately, a certain disposition to 
deny what we consider our natural rights; 
but we know that our powers are not to be re- 
sisted, and we have the inward assurance that 
the forces of nature are with us. 

This, with reference to the outer world. 
But there is a want of clearness in the rela- 
tion between ourselves. You understand 
your great temporal function, which is the 
wise direction of the industry of masses, the 
accumulation and distribution of wealth ; but 
you do not so clearly understand the spiritual 
function of the intellectual class, and you do 
not think of it quite justly. This want of un- 
derstanding is called by some of us your Phil* 
istinism. Will you permit me to explain what 
the intellectual class thinks of you, and what 
is its opinion about itself? 

Pray excuse any appearance of presump- 
tion on my part if I say we of the intellectual 
class and you of the industrial. My position 
is something like that of the clergyman who 
reads, ' ' Let him come to me or to some other 
learned and discreet minister of God's word," 
thereby calling himself learned and discreet. 
It is a simple matter of fact that I belong to 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 515 

the intellectual class, since I lead its life, just 
as it is a fact that you have a quarter of a 
million of money. 

First, I want to show that the existence of 
my class is necessary. 

Although men in various occupations often 
acquire a considerable degree of culture out- 
side their trade, the highest results of culture 
can scarcely ever be attained by men whose 
time is taken up in earning a fortune. Every 
man has but a limited flow of mental energy 
per day ; and if this is used up in an indus- 
trial leadership, he cannot do much more in 
the intellectual sphere than simply ascertain 
what has been done by others. Now, although 
we have a certain respect, and the respect is 
just, for those who know what others have 
accomplished, it is clear that if no one did 
more than this, if no one made any fresh dis- 
coveries, the world would make no progress 
whatever ; and in fact, if nobody ever had 
been dedicated to intellectual pursuits in pre- 
ceding ages, the men who only learn what 
others have done, would in these days have 
had nothing to learn. Past history proves 
the immensity of the debt which the world 
owes to men who gave their whole time and 
attention to intellectual pursuits ; and if the 
existences of these men could be eliminated 
from the past of the human race, its present 
would be very different from what it is. A 
list has been published of men who have done 
much good work in the intervals of business, 
but still the fact remains that the great intel- 



516 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

lectual pioneers were absorbed and devoted 
men, scorning wealth so far as it affected 
themselves, and ready to endure everything 
for knowledge beyond the knowledge of their 
times. Instances of such enthusiasm abound, 
an enthusiasm fully justified by the value of 
the results which it has achieved. When 
Alexander Humboldt sold his inheritance to 
have the means for his great journey in South 
America, and calmly dedicated the whole of 
a long life, and the strength of a robust con- 
stitution, to the advancement of natural 
knowledge, he acted foolishly indeed, if years, 
and strength, and fortune are given to us only 
to be well invested in view of money returns • 
but the world has profited by his decision. 
Faraday gave up the whole of his time to dis- 
covery when he might have earned a large 
fortune by the judicious investment of his 
extraordinary skill in chemistry. Living- 
stone has sacrificed everything to the pursuit 
of his great work in Africa. Lives such as 
these — and many resemble them in useful de- 
votion of which we hear much less — are 
clearly not compatible with much money-get- 
ting. A decent existence, free from debt, is 
all that such men ought to be held answera- 
ble for. 

I have taken two or three leading instances, 
but there is quite a large class of intellectual 
people who cannot in the nature of things 
serve society effectively in their own way 
without being quite outside of the industrial 
life. There is a real incompatibility between 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 517 

some pursuits and others. I suspect that you 
would have been a good general, for you are 
a born leader and commander of men ; but it 
would have been difficult to unite a regular 
military career with strict personal attention 
to your factories. We often find the same 
difficulty in our intellectual pursuits. We 
are not always quite so unpractical as you 
think we are ; but the difficulty is how to find 
the time, and how to arrange it so as not to 
miss two or three distinct classes of oppor- 
tunities. We are not all of us exactly imbe- 
ciles in money matters, though the pecuniary 
results of our labors seem no doubt pitiful 
enough. There is a tradition that a Greek 
philosopher, who was suspected by the prac- 
tical men of his day of incapacity for affairs, 
devoted a year to prove the contrary, and 
traded so judiciously that he amassed 
thereby great riches. It may be doubtful 
whether he could do it in one year, but many 
a fine intellectual capacity has overshadowed 
a fine practical capacity in the same head by 
the withdrawal of time and effort. 

It is because the energies of one man are so 
limited, and there is so little time in a single 
human life, that the intellectual and indus- 
trial functions must, in their' highest develop- 
ment, be separated. No one man could unite 
in his own person your life and Humboldt's, 
though it is possible that he might have the 
natural capacity for both. Grant us, then, 
the liberty not to earn very much money, 
and this being once granted, try to look upon 



518 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

our intellectual superiority as a simple natu- 
ral fact, just as we look upon your pecuniary 
superiority. 

In saying in this plain way that we are in- 
tellectually superior to you and your class, I 
am guilty of no more pride and vanity than 
you when you affirm or display your wealth. 
The fact is there, in its simplicity. We have 
culture because we have paid the twenty or 
thirty years of labor which are the price of 
culture, just as you have great factories and 
estates which are the reward of your life's 
patient and intelligent endeavor. 

Why should there be any narrow jealousy 
between us; why any contempt on the one 
side or the others Each has done his ap- 
pointed work, each has caused to fructify the 
talent which the Master gave. 

Yet a certain jealousy does exist, if not be- 
tween you and me personally, at least be- 
tween our classes. The men Avho have cult- 
ure without wealth are jealous of the power 
and privileges of those who possess money 
without culture ; and on the other hand, the 
men whose time has been too entirely absorbed 
by commercial pursuits to leave them any mar- 
gin sufficient to do justice to their intellectual 
powers, are often painfully sensitive to the 
contempt of the cultivated, and strongly dis- 
posed, from jealousy, to undervalue culture 
itself. Both are wrong so far as they indulge 
any unworthy and unreasonable feeling of 
this kind, The existence of the two classes is 
necessary to an advanced civilization. The 



TBABES AND PROFESSIONS. 519 

science of accumulating and administrating 
material wealth, of wnich you yourself are a 
great practical master, is the foundation of 
the material prosperity of nations, and it is 
only when this prosperity is fully assured to 
great numbers that the arts and sciences can 
develop themselves in perfect liberty and 
with the tranquil assurance of their own per- 
manence. The advancement of material well- 
being in modern states tends so directly to 
the advancement of intellectual pursuits, 
even when the makers of fortunes are them- 
selves indifferent to this result, that it ought 
always to be a matter of congratulation for 
the intellectual class itself, which needs the 
support of a great public with leisure to read 
and think. It is easy to show how those arts 
and sciences which our class delights to culti- 
vate are built upon those developments of in- 
dustry which have been brought about by the 
energy of yours. Suppose the case of a scien- 
tific chemist: the materials for his experi- 
ments are provided ready to his hand by the 
industrial class; the record of them is pre- 
served on paper manufactured by the same 
industrial class; and the public which en- 
courages him by its attention is usually found 
in great cities which are maintained by the 
labors of the same useful servants of human- 
ity. It is possible, no doubt, in these modern 
tunes, that some purely pastoral or agricultu- 
ral community might produce a great chem- 
ist, because a man of inborn scientific genius 
who came into the world in an agricultural 



520 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

country might in these days get his books and 
materials from industrial centres at a dis- 
tance, but his work would still be based on 
the industrial life of others. No pastoral or 
agricultural community which was really 
isolated from industrial communities ever 
produced a chemist. And now consider how' 
enormously important this one science of 
chemistry has proved itself even to our intel- 
lectual life! Several other sciences have 
been either greatly strengthened or else alto- 
gether renewed by it, and the wonderful pho- 
tographic processes have been for nature and 
the fine arts what printing was for literature, 
placing reliable and authentic materials for 
study within the reach of every one. Litera- 
ture itself has profited by the industrial prog- 
ress of the present age, in the increased 
cheapness of everything that is material in 
books. I please myself with the reflection 
that even you make paper cheaper by manu- 
facturing so much cotton. 

All these are reasons why we ought not to 
be jealous of you; and now permit me to in- 
dicate a few other reasons why it is unreason- 
able on your part to feel any jealousy of us. 

Suppose we were to cease working to-mor- 
row — cease working, I mean, in our peculiar 
ways — and all of us become colliers and fac- 
tory operatives instead, with nobody to sup- 
ply our places. Or, since you may possibly 
be of opinion that there is enough literature 
and science in the world at the present day, 
suppose rather that at some preceding date 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 521 

the whole literary and scientific and artistic 
labor of the human race ; had come suddenly 
to a standstill. Mind, I do not say of English- 
men merely, but of the whole race, for if any 
intellectual work had been done in France or 
Germany, or even in Japan, you would have 
imported it like cotton and foreign cereals. 
Well, I have no hesitation in telling you that 
although there was a good deal of literature 
and science in England before the 1st of Jan- 
uary, 1800, the present condition of the nation 
would have been a very chaotic condition if 
the intellectual class had ceased on that day 
to think and observe and to place on record 
its thoughts and observations. The life of a 
progressive nation cannot long go forward ex- 
clusively on the thinking of the past: its 
thoughtful men must not be all dead men, 
but living men who accompany it on its 
course. It is they who make clear the les- 
sons of experience; it is they who discover 
the reliable general laws upon which all safe 
action must be founded in the future ;• it is they 
who give decision to human action in every di- 
rection by constantly registering, in language 
of comprehensive accuracy, both its successes 
and its failures. It is their great and ardu- 
ous labor which makes knowledge accessible 
to men of action at the cost of little effort and 
the smallest possible expenditure of time. 
The intellectual class grows in numbers and 
in influence along with the numbers and in- 
fluence of the materially productive popula- 
tion of the State. And not only are the natu- 



522 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

ral philosophers, the writers of contemporary 
and past history, the discoverers in science, 
necessary in the strictest sense to the life of 
such a community as the modern English 
community, but even the poets, the novelists, 
the artists are necessary to the perfection of 
its life. Without them and their work the 
national mind would be as incomplete as 
would be the natural universe without beauty. 
But this, perhaps, you will perceive less 
clearly, or be less willing to admit. 



LETTER V. 

TO A YOUNG ETONIAN WHO THOUGHT OF BE- 
COMING A COTTON-SPINNER. 

Abeurd old prejudices against commerce— Stigma attached 
to the great majority of occupations — Traditions of feu- 
dalism — Distinctions between one trade and another — A 
real instance of an Etonian who had gone into the cotton- 
trade — Observations on this case — The trade a fine field 
for energy — A poor one for intellectual culture — It devel- 
ops practical ability — Culture not possible without leisure 
— The founders of commercial fortunes. 

It is agreeable to see various indications 
that the absurd old prejudices against com- 
merce are certainly declining. There still re- 
mains quite enough contempt for trade in the 
professional classes and the aristocracy, to 
give us frequent opportunities for studying it 
as a relic of former superstition, unhappily 
not yet rare enough to be quite a curiosity ; 
but as time passes and people become more 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 523 

rational, it will retreat to out-of-the-way cor- 
ners of old country mansions and rural par- 
sonages, at a safe distance from the light-giv- 
ing centres of industry. It is a surprising 
fact, and one which proves the almost pa- 
thetic spirit of deference and submission to 
superiors which characterizes the English 
people, that out of the hundreds of occupa- 
tions which are followed by the busy classes 
of this country, only three are entirely free 
from some degrading stigma, so that they 
may be followed by a high-born youth with- 
out any sacrifice of caste. The wonder is 
that the great active majority of the nation, 
the men who by their industry and intelli- 
gence have made England what she is, should 
ever have been willing to submit to so inso- 
lent a rule as this rule of caste, which, instead 
of honoring industry, honored idleness, and 
attached a stigma to the most useful and im- 
portant trades. The landowner, the soldier, 
the priest, these three were pure from every 
stain of degradation, and only these three 
were quite absolutely and ethereally pure. 
Next to them came the lawyer and the physi- 
cian, on whom there rested some traces of the 
lower earth; so that although the youthful 
baron would fight or preach, he would nei- 
ther plead nor heal. And after these came 
the lower professions and the innumerable 
trades, all marked with stigmas of deeper 
and deeper degradation. 

From the intellectual point of view these 
prejudices indicate a state of society in which 



524 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

public opinion has not emerged from barbae 
ism. It understands the strength of the 
feudal chief having land, with serfs or voters 
on the land; it knows the uses of the sword, 
and it dreads the menaces of the priesthood. 
Beyond this it knows little, and despises what 
it does not understand. It is ignorant of sci- 
ence, and industry, and art ; it despises them 
as servile occupations beneath its conception 
of the gentleman. This is the tradition of 
countries which retain the impressions of 
feudalism; but notwithstanding all our phi- 
losophy, it is difficult for us to avoid some feel- 
ing of astonishment when we reflect that the 
public opinion of England — a country that 
owes so much of her greatness and nearly all 
her wealth to commercial enterprise — should 
be contemptuous towards commerce. 

I may notice, in passing, a very curious 
form of this narrowness. Trade is despised, 
but distinctions are established between one 
trade and another. A man who sells wine is 
considered more of a gentleman than a man 
who sells figs and raisins ; and I believe you 
will find, if you observe people carefully, that 
a woollen manufacturer is thought to be a 
shade less vulgar than a cotton manufacturer. 
These distinctions are seldom based on rea- 
son, for the work of commerce is generally 
very much the same sort of work, mentally, 
whatever may be the materials it deals in. 
You may be heartily congratulated on the 
strength of mind, firmness of resolution, and 
superiority to prejudice, which have led you 



TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. 525 

to choose the business of a cotton-spinner. It 
is an excellent business, and. in itself, every 
whit as honorable as dealing in corn and cat- 
tle, which our nobles do habitually without 
reproach. But now that I have disclaimed 
any participation in the stupid narrowness 
which despises trade in general, and the cot- 
ton-trade in particular, let me add a few 
words upon the effects of the cotton business 
on the mind. 

There appeared in one of the newspapers a 
little time since a most interesting and evi- 
dently genuine letter from an Etonian, who 
had actually entered business in a cotton fac- 
tory, and devoted himself to it so as to earn 
the confidence of his employers and a salary 
of 400/. a year as manager. He had waited 
some time uselessly for a diplomatic appoint- 
ment which did not arrive, and so, rather 
than lose the best years of early manhood, as 
a more indolent fellow would have done very 
willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolu- 
tion of entering business, and carried out his 
determination with admirable persistence. 
At first nobody would believe that the ; ' swell " 
could be serious ; people thought that his idea 
of manufacturing was a mere freak, and ex- 
pected him to abandon it when he had to face 
the tedium of the daily work ; but the swell 
teas serious — went to the mill at six in the 
morning and stayed there till six at night, 
from Monday till Saturday inclusive. After 
a year of this, his new companions believed 
in him. 



526 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a 
manifestation of energy, and that truest inde- 
pendence which looks to fortune as the re- 
ward of its own manly effort, but it may be 
permitted to me to make a few observations 
on this young gentleman's resolve. What he 
did seems to me rather the act of an energetic 
nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of 
an intellectual nature seeking pasture and ex- 
ercise for the intellect. I am far indeed from 
desiring, by this comparison, to cast any dis- 
paraging light on the young gentleman's 
natural endowments, which appear to have 
been valuable in their order and robust in 
their degree, nor do I question the wisdom of 
his choice; all I mean to imply is, that 
although he had chosen a fine large field for 
simple energy, it was a poor and barren field 
for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for 
one moment the difference in this respect be- 
tween the career which he had abandoned 
and the trade he had embraced. As an 
attache he would have lived in capital cities, 
have had the best opportunities for perfecting 
himself in modern languages, and for meeting 
the most varied and the most interesting 
society. In every day there would have been 
precious hours of leisure, to be employed in 
the increase of his culture. If an intellectual 
man, having to choose between diplomacy 
and cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spin- 
ning it would be from the desire for wealth, 
or from the love of an English home. The 
life of a cotton manufacturer, who personally 



TBAD1JS AND PROFESSIONS. 527 

attends to his business with that close super- 
vision which has generally conducted to 
success, leaves scarcely any margin for intel- 
lectual pleasure or spare energy for intellect- 
ual work. After ten hours in the mill, 
it is difficult to sit down and study; and 
even if there were energy enough, the mind 
would not readily cast off the burden of great 
practical anxieties and responsibilities so as 
to attune itself to disinterested thinking. 
The leaders of industry often display mental 
power of as high an order as that which is 
employed in the government of great empires ; 
they show the highest administrative abili- 
ty, they have to deal continually with finan- 
cial questions wiiich on their smaller scale re- 
quire as much forethought and acumen as 
those that concern the exchequer; but the 
ability they need is always strictly practical, 
and there is the widest difference between the 
practical and the intellectual minds. A con- 
stant and close pressure of practical consider- 
ations develops the sort of power which 
deals effectually with the present and its needs 
but atrophies the higher mind. The two 
minds which we call intelligence and intellect 
resemble the feet and wings of birds. Eagles 
and -swallows walk badly or not at all, but 
they have a marvellous strength of flight ; 
ostriches are great pedestrians, but they 
know nothing of the regions of the air. 
The best that can be hoped for men immersed 
in the details of business is that they may be 
able, like partridges and pheasants, to take a 



528 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

short flight on an emergency, and rise, if 
only for a few minutes, above the level of the 
stubble and the copse. 

Without, therefore, desiring to imply any 
prejudiced contempt for trade, I "do desire to 
urge the consideration of its inevitable effects 
upon the mind. For men of great practical 
intelligence and abundant energy, trade is all- 
sufficing, but it could never entirely satisfy 
an intellectual nature. And although there 
is drudgery in every pursuit, for even litera^ 
ture and painting are full of it, still there are 
certain kinds of drudgery which intellectual 
natures find to be harder to endure than 
others. The drudgery which they bear least 
easily is an incessant attention to duties 
which have no intellectual interest, and yet 
which cannot be properly performed mechani- 
cally so as to leave the mind at liberty for its 
own speculations. Deep thinkers are notori- 
ously absent, for thought requires abstraction 
from what surrounds us, and it is hard for 
them to be denied the liberty of dreaming. 
An intellectual person might be happy as a 
stone-breaker on the roadside, because the 
work would leave his mind at liberty ; but he 
would certainly be miserable as an engine- 
driver at a coal-pit shaft, where the abstrac- 
tion of an instant would imperil the lives of 
others. 

In a recent address delivered by Mr. Glad- 
stone at Liverpool, he acknowledged the neg- 
lect of culture which is one of the shortcom- 
ings of our trading community, and held out 



TRADES AXD PROFESSIONS. 529 

the hope (perhaps in some degree illusory) 
that the same persons might become eminent 
in commerce and in learning. No doubt there 
have been instances of this; and when a 
" concern " has been firmly established by the 
energy of a predecessor, the heir to it may be 
satisfied with a royal sort of supervision, 
leaving the drudgery of detail to his mana- 
gers, and so secure for himself that sufficient 
leisure without which high culture is not pos- 
sible. But the founders of great commercial 
fortunes have, I believe, in every instance 
thrown their ivhole energy into their trade, 
making wealth their aim, and leaving culture 
to be added in another generation. The 
founders of commercial families are in this 
country usually men of great mother- wit and 
plenty of determination— but illiterate, 
34 



PART XII o 

SURROUNDINGS. 



LETTER I. 

TO a FRIEND WHO OFTEN CHANGED HIS PLACE 
OF RESIDENCE. 

An unsettled class of English people— Effect of localities on 
the mind— Reaction against surroundings— Landscape- 
painting a consequence of it— Crushing effect of too 
much natural magnificence — The mind takes color from 
its surroundings— Selection of a place of residence- 
Charles Dickens — Heinrich Heine— Dr. Arnold at Rugby — 
His house in the lake district — Tycho Brahe — His estab- 
lishment on the island of Hween — The young Humboldts 
in the Castle of Tegel— Alexander Humboldt's apprecia- 
tion of Paris— Dr. Johnson— Mr. Buckle— Cowper— Galileo. 

x find that there is a whole class of English 
subjects (you belong to that class) of whom it 
is utterly impossible to predict where they 
will be living in five years. Indeed, as you 
are the worst of correspondents, I only 
learned your present address, by sheer acci- 
dent, from a perfect stranger, and he told 
me, of course, that you had plans for going 
somewhere else, but where that might be he 
knew not. The civilized English nomad is 
usually, like yourself, a person of indepen- 
dent means, rich enough to bear the expenses 



S UBEO UXDIXGS. 531 

of frequent removals, but without the cares 
of property. His money is safely invested in 
the funds, or in railways; and so, wherever 
the postman can bring his dividends, he can 
live in freedom from material cares. When 
his wife is as unsettled as himself, the pair 
seem to live in a balloon, or in a sort of 
Noah's ark, which goes whither the wind 
lists, and takes ground in the most unex- 
pected places. 

Have you ever studied the effect of locali- 
ties on the mind — on your own mind? That 
which we are is due in great part to the acci- 
dent of our surroundings, which act upon us 
in one or two quite opposite ways. Either we 
feel in harmony with them, in which case 
they produce a positive effect upon us, or else 
we are out of harmony, and then they drive 
us into the strangest reactions. A great ugly 
English town, like Manchester, for instance, 
makes some men such thorough townsmen 
that they cannot live without smoky chim- 
neys ; or it fills the souls of others with such 
a passionate longing for beautiful scenery and 
rustic retirement, that they find it absolutely 
necessary to bury themselves from time to 
time in the recesses of picturesque mountains. 
The development of modern landscape-paint- 
ing has not been due to habits of rural exist- 
ence, but to the growth of very big and hide- 
ous modern cities, which made men long for 
shady forests, and pure streams, and magnif- 
icent spectacles of sunset, and dawn, and 
moonlight. It is by this time a trite observa- 



532 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 

tion that people who have always iived in 
beautiful scenery do not, and cannot, appre- 
ciate it ; that too much natural magnificence 
positively crushes the activity of the intellect, 
and that its best effect is simply that of re- 
freshment for people who have not access to 
it every day. It happens too, in a converse 
way, that rustics and mountaineers have the 
strongest appreciation of the advantages of 
great cities, and thrive in them often more 
happily than citizens who are born in the 
brick streets. Those who have great facilities 
for changing their place of residence ought 
always to bear in mind that every locality is 
like a dyer's vat. and that the residents take 
its color, or some other color, from it just as 
the clothes do that the dyer steeps in stain. 
If you look back upon your past life, you will 
assuredly admit that every place has colored 
your mental habits ; and that altnough other 
tints from other places have supervened, so 
that it may be difficult to say precisely what 
remains of the place you lived in many years 
ago, still something does remain, like the 
effect of the first painting on a picture, which 
tells on the whole work permanently, though 
it may have been covered over and over again 
by what painters call scumblings and glaz- 
ings. 

The selection of a place of residence, even 
though we only intend to pass a few short 
years in it, is from the intellectual point of 
view a matter so important that one can 
hardly exaggerate its consequences. We see 



SURROUNDINGS 533 

this quite plainly in the case of authors, 
whose minds are more visible to us than the 
minds of other men, and therefore more easily 
and conveniently studied. We need no biog- 
rapher to inform us that Dickens was a Lon- 
doner, that Browning had lived in Italy, that 
Euskin had passed many seasons in Switzer- 
land and Venice. Suppose for one moment 
that these three authors had been born in Ire- 
land, and had never quitted it, is it not cer- 
tain that their production would have been 
different? Let us carry our supposition far- 
ther still, and conceive, if we can. the differ- 
ence to their literary performance if they had 
been born, not in Ireland, but in Iceland, and 
lived there all their lives ! Is it not highly 
probable that in this case their production 
would have been so starved and impoverished 
from insufficiency of material and of sugges- 
tion, that they would have uttered nothing 
but some simple expression of sentiment and 
imagination, some homely song or tale? All 
sights and sounds have their influence on our 
temper and on our thoughts, and our inmost 
being is not the same in one place as in an- 
other. We are like blank paper that takes a 
tint by reflection from what is nearest, and 
changes it as its surroundings change. In a 
dull gray room, how gray and dull it looks ! 
but it will be bathed in rose or amber if the 
hangings are crimson or yellow. There are 
natures that go to the streams of life in great 
cities as the heart goes to the water-brooks ; 
there are other natures that need the solitude 



531 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

of primaeval forests and the silence of the 
Alps. The most popular of English novelists 
sometimes went to write in the tranquillity of 
beautiful scenery, taking his manuscript to 
the shore of some azure lake in Switzerland, 
in sight of the eternal snow; but all that 
beauty and peace, all that sweetness of pure 
air and color, were not seductive enough to 
overcome for many days the deep longing for 
the London streets. His genius needed the 
streets, as a bee needs the summer flowers, 
and languished when long separated from 
them. Others have needed the wild heather, 
or the murmur of the ocean, or the sound of 
autumn winds that strip great forest-trees. 
Who does not deeply pity poor Heine in his 
last sad years, when he lay fixed on his couch 
of pain in that narrow Parisian lodging, and 
compared it to the sounding grave of Merlin 
the enchanter, ' ' which is situated in the wood 
of Brozeliande, in Brittany, under lofty oaks 
whose tops taper, like emerald flames, tow- 
ards heaven. O brother Merlin," he ex- 
claims, and with what touching pathos ! " O 
brother Merlin, I envy thee those trees, with 
their fresh breezes, for never a green leaf rus- 
tles about this mattress-grave of mine in 
Paris, where from morning till night I hear 
nothing but the rattle of wheels, the clatter 
of hammers, street-brawls, and the jingling 
of pianofortes ! " 

In the biography of Dr. Arnold, his longing 
for natural beauty recurs as one of the pecul- 
iarities of his constitution. H6 did not need 



SURROUNDINGS. SSa 

very grand scenery, though he enjoyed it 
deeply, but some wild natural loveliness was 
such a necessity for him that he pined for it 
unhappily in its absence. Rugby could offer 
him scarcely anything of this. ' ' We have no 
hills," he lamented, "no plains — not a single 
wood, and but one single copse ; no heath, no 
down, no rock, no river, no clear stream — 
scarcely any flowers, for the lias is particu- 
larly poor in them — nothing but one endless 
monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow 
trees. This is to me a daily privation ; it robs 
me of what is naturally my anti-attrition ; and 
as I grow older I begin to feel it. . . . The pos- 
itive dulness of the country about Rugby 
makes it to me a mere working-place : I can- 
not expatiate there even in my walks." 

1 ' The monotonous character of the midland 
scenery of Warwickshire," says Dr. Arnold's 
biographer, ' ' was to him, with his strong love 
of natural beauty and variety, absolutely re- 
pulsive; there was something almost touch- 
ing in the eagerness with which, amidst that 
4 endless succession of fields and hedgerows, ' 
he would make the most of any features of a 
higher order ; in the pleasure with which lie 
would cherish the few places where the cur- 
rent of the Avon was perceptible, or where a 
glimpse of the horizon could be discerned ; in 
the humorous despair with which he would 
gaze on the dull expanse of fields eastward 
from Rugby. It is no wonder we do not like 
looking that way, when one considers that 
there is nothing fine between us and the Ural 



536 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

mountains. Conceive what you look over, 
for you just miss Sweden, and look over Hoi- 
land, the north of Germany, and the centre 
of Russia."* 

This dreadful midland monotony impelled 
Dr. Arnold to seek refreshment and compen- 
sation in a holiday home in the Lake district, 
and there he found all that his eyes longed 
for, streams, hills, woods, and wild-flowers. 
Nor had his belief in the value of these sweet 
natural surroundings been illusory ; such in- 
stincts are not given for our betrayal, and the 
soul of a wise man knows its own needs, both 
before they are supplied, and after. West- 
moreland gave him all he had hoped from it, 
and more. "Body and mind," he wrote, 
"alike seem to repose greedily in delicious 
quiet, without dulness, which we enjoy in 
Westmoreland." And again: "At Allan 
Bank, in the summer, I worked on the Roman 
history, and hope to do so again in the winter. 
It is very inspiring to write with such a view 
before one's eyes as that from our drawing- 
' room at Allan Bank, where the trees of the 
shrubbery gradually run up into the trees of 
the cliff, and the mountain-side, with its in- 
finite variety of rocky peaks and points upon 
which the cattle expatiate, rises over the tops 
of the trees." 

Of all happily-situated mental laborers 
who have worked since the days of Horace, 



* How purely this is the misery of a man of culture ! 
peasant would not have gone so far. 



6 URROUNMNG&. 587 

surely Tycho Brahe was the happiest and 
most to be envied. King Frederick of Den- 
mark gave him a delightful island for his hab- 
itation, large enough for him not to feel im- 
prisoned (the circumference being about five 
miles), yet little enough for him to feel as 
snugly at home there as Mr. Waterton in his 
high- walled park. The land was fertile and 
rich in game, so that the scientific Robinson 
Crusoe lived in material abundance ; and as 
he w^as only about seven miles from Copen- 
hagen, he could procure everything necessary 
to his convenience. He built a great house on 
the elevated land in the midst . of the isle, 
about three-quarters of a mile from the sea, a 
palace of art and science, with statues and 
paintings and all the apparatus which the in- 
genuity of that age could contrive for the ad- 
vancement of astronomical pursuits. Uniting 
the case of a rich nobleman's existence with 
every aid to science, including special erec- 
tions for his instruments, and a printing estab- 
lishment that worked under Ms own imme- 
diate direction, he lived far enough from the 
capital to enjoy the most perfect tranquillity, 
yet near enough to escape the consequences 
of too absolute isolation. Aided in all he un- 
dertook by a staff of assistants that he himself 
had trained, supported in his labor by the en- 
couragement of his sovereign, and especially 
by his own unflagging interest in scientific in- 
vestigation, he led in that peaceful island the 
ideal intellectual life. Of that mansion where 
he labored, of the observatory where he 



538 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

watched the celestial phenomena, surrounded 
but not disturbed by the waves of a shallow 
sea, there remains at this day literally not one 
stone upon another; but many a less fortu- 
nate laborer in the same field, harassed by 
poverty, distracted by noise and interruption, 
has remembered with pardonable envy the 
splendid peace of Uranienborg. 

It was one of the many fortunate circum- 
stances in the position of the two Humboldts 
that they passed their youth in the quiet old 
castle of Tegel, separated from Berlin by a 
pine-wood, and surrounded by walks and gar- 
dens. They too, like Tycho Brahe, enjoyed 
that happy combination of tranquillity with 
the neighborhood of a capital city which is so 
peculiarly favorable to culture. In later life, 
when Alexander Humboldt had collected those 
immense masses of material which were the 
result of his travels in South America, he 
warmly appreciated the unequalled advan- 
tages of Paris. He knew how to extract from 
the solitudes of primaeval nature what he 
wanted for the enrichment of his mind ; but 
he knew also how to avail himself of all the 
assistance and opportunities which are only 
to be had in great capitals. He was not at- 
tracted to town-life, like Dr. J ohnson and Llr. 
Buckle, to the exclusion of wild nature ; but 
neither, on the other hand, had he that hor- 
ror of towns which was a morbid defect in 
Cowper, and which condemns those who 
suffer from it to rusticity. Even Galileo, who 
thought the country especially favorable to 



S I f E E ( ) l \\ D ING S. 539 

speculative intellects, and the walls of cities 
an imprisonment for them, declared that the 
best years of his life were those he had spent 
in Padua. 



LETTER II. 

TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT SUR- 
ROUNDINGS WERE A MATTER OF INDIFFER- 
ENCE TO A THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED MIND. 

Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse — Geoffrey St. Hilaire in 
the besieged city of Alexandria— Goethe at the bombard- 
ment of Verdun— Lullo. the Oriental missionary— Gior- 
dano Bruno— Unacknowledged effect of surroundings- 
Effect of Frankfort on Goethe— Great capitals— Goethe— 
His garden-house— What he said about Beranger and 
Paris— Fortunate surroundings of Titian. 

There are so many well-known instances of 
men who have been able to continue their in- 
tellectual labors under the most unfavorable 
conditions, that your argument might be pow- 
erfully supported by an appeal to actual ex- 
perience. There is Archimedes, of course, to 
begin with, who certainly seems to have ab- 
stracted himself sufficiently from the tumult 
of a great siege to forget it altogether when 
occupied with his mathematical problems. 
The prevalent stories of his death, though not 
identical, point evidently to a habit of abstrac- 
tion which had been remarked as a peculiar- 
ity by those about him, and it is probable 
enough that a great inventor in engineering 
would follow his usual speculations under cir- 
cumstances which, though dangerous, had 



540 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

lasted long enough to become habitual. Even 
modern warfare, which from the use of gun- 
powder is so much noisier than that which 
raged at Syracuse, does not hinder men from 
thinking and writing when they are used to 
it. Geoffroy St. Hilaire never worked more 
steadily and regularly in his whole life than 
he did in the midst of the besieged city of 
Alexandria. ki Knowledge is so sweet," he 
said long afterwards, in speaking of this ex- 
perience, '• that it never entered my thoughts 
how a bombshell might in an instant have 
cast into the abyss both me and my docu- 
ments." By good luck two electric fish had 
been caught and given to him just then, so he 
immediately began to make experiments, as 
if he had been in his own cabinet in Paris, 
and for three weeks he thought of nothing 
else, utterly forgetting the fierce warfare that 
filled the air with thunder and flame, and the 
streets with victims. He had sixty-four hy- 
potheses to amuse him. and it was necessary 
to review his whole scientific acquirement 
with reference to each of these as he consid- 
ered them one by one. It may be doubted, 
however, whether "he was more in danger 
from the bombardment or from the intensity 
of his own mental concentration. He grew 
thin and haggard, slept one hour in the twen- 
ty-four, and lived in a perilous condition of 
nervous strain and excitement. Goethe at 
the bombardment of Verdun, letting his mind 
take its own course, found that it did not oc- 
cupy itself with tragedies, or with anything 



sriiiiorxDixas. 541 

suggested by what was passing in the conflict 
around him, but by scientific considerations 
about the phenomena of colors. He noticed, 
in a passing observation, the bad effect of war 
upon the mind, how it makes people destruct- 
ive one day and creative the next, how it ac- 
customs them to phases intended to excite 
hope in desperate circumstances, thus pro- 
ducing a peculiar sort of hypocrisy different 
from the priestly and courtly kind. This is 
the extent of his interest in the war; but 
when he finds some soldiers fishing he is at- 
tracted to the spot and profoundly occupied 
— not with the soldiers, but with the optical 
phenomena on the water. He was never very 
much moved by external events, nor did he 
take that intense interest in the politics of the 
day which we often find in people less studi- 
ous of literature and science. Eaimond Lullo, 
the Oriental missionary, continued to write 
many volumes in the midst of the most con- 
tinual difficulties and dangers, preserving as 
much mental energy and clearness as if he 
had been safe and tranquil in a library. Gi- 
ordano Bruno worked constantly also in the 
midst of political troubles and religious perse- 
cutions, and his biographer tells us that •' il 
desiderio vivissimo della scienza aveva ben 
piu efficacia sull' animo del Bruno, che non 
gli avvenimenti esterni." 

These examples which have just occurred 
to me, and many others that it would be easy 
to collect, may be taken to prove at least so 
much as this, that it i 4 * possible to be absorbed 



542 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

in private studies when surrounded by the 
most disturbing influences; but even in these 
eases it would be a mistake to conclude that 
the surroundings had no effect whatever. 
There can be no doubt that Geoff roy St. Hiiaire 
was intensely excited by the siege of Alex- 
andria, though he may not have attributed 
his excitement to that cause. His mind was 
occupied with the electrical fishes, but his 
nervous system was wrought upon by the 
siege, and kept in that state of tension which 
at the same time enabled him to get through 
a gigantic piece of intellectual labor and made 
him incapable of rest. Had this condition 
been prolonged it must have terminated 
either in exhaustion or in madness. Men have 
often engaged in literature or science to es- 
cape the pressure of anxiety, which strenu- 
ous mental labor permits us, at least tempo- 
rarily, to forget ; but the circumstances which 
surround us have invariably an influence of 
some kind upon our thinking, though the 
connection may not be obvious. Even in the 
case of G-oethe, who could study optics on 
a battle-field, his English biographer recog- 
nizes the effect of the Frankfort life which 
surrounded the great author in his childhood. 
" The old Frankfort city, with its busy 
crowds, its fairs, its mixed population, and its 
many sources of excitement, offered great 
temptations and great pasture to so desultory 
a genius. This is perhaps a case wherein cir- 
cumstances may be seen influencing the di- 
rection of character. ... A large continuity 



• 8 UliROUyjJlXGS. 543 

of thought and effort was perhaps radically 
uncongenial to such a temperament ; yet one 
cannot help speculating whether under other 
circumstances he might not have achieved it. 
Had he been reared in a quiet little old Ger- 
man town, where he would have daily seen 
the same faces in the silent streets, and come 
in contact with the same characters, his cul- 
ture might have been less various, but it 
might perhaps have been deeper. Had he 
been reared in the country, with only the 
changing seasons and the sweet serenities of 
nature to occupy his attention when released 
from study, he would certainly have been a 
different poet. The long summer afternoons 
spent in lonely rambles, the deepening twi- 
lights filled with shadowy visions, the slow 
uniformity of his external life necessarily 
throwing him more and more upon the 
subtler diversities of inward experience, 
would inevitably have influenced his genius 
in quite different directions, would have an- 
imated his works with a very different spirit.'' 
We are sometimes told that life in a great 
capital is essential to the development of gen- 
ius, but Frankfort was the largest town 
Goethe ever lived in, and he never visited 
either Paris or London. Much of the sanity 
of his genius may have been due to his resi- 
dence in so tranquil a place as Weimar, where 
he could shut himself up in his " garden- 
house " and lock all the gates of the bridge 
over the Ilm. " The solitude," says Mr. 
Lewes, ' ' is absolute, broken only by the oc- 



544 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

casional sound of the church clock, the music 
from the barracks, and the screaming of the 
peacocks spreading their superb beauty in 
the park." Few men of genius have been 
happier in their surroundings than Goethe. 
He had tranquillity, and yet was not deprived 
of intellectual intercourse ; the scenery with- 
in excursion-distance from his home was in- 
teresting and even inspiring, yet not so 
splendid as to be overwhelming. We know 
from his conversations that he was quite 
aware of the value of those little centres of 
culture to Germany, and yet in one place he 
speaks of Beranger in the tone which seems 
to imply an appreciation of the larger life of 
Paris. ' ' Fancy, " he says, k k this same Beran- 
ger away from Paris, and the influence and 
opportunities of a world-city, born as the 
son of a poor tailor, at Jena or Weimar ; let 
him run his wretched career in either of the 
two small cities, and see what fruit would 
have grown on such a soil and in such an at- 
mosphere." 

We cannot too frequently be reminded 
that we are nothing of ourselves, and by our- 
selves, and are only something by the place 
we hold in the intellectual chain of humanity 
by which electricity is conveyed to us and 
through us — to be increased in the transmis- 
sion if we have great natural power and are 
favorably situated, but not otherwise. A 
child is born to the Vecelli family at Cadore, 
and when it is nine years old is taken to Ven- 
ice and placed under the tuition of Sebastian 



S UMR O UNDING S. 545 

Zuccato. Afterwards he goes to Bellini's 
school, and there gets acquainted with an- 
other student, one year his junior, whose 
name is Barbarelli. They live together and 
work together in Venice; then young Bar- 
barelli (known to posterity as G-iorgione), 
after putting on certain spaces of wall and 
squares of canvas such color as the world had 
never before seen, dies in his early manhood 
and leaves Vecellio, whom we call Titian, to 
work on there in Venice till the plague stays 
his hand in his hundredth year. The genius 
came into the world, but all the possibilities 
of his development depended upon the place 
and the time. He came exactly in the right 
place and precisely at the right time. To be 
born not far from Venice in the days of Bel- 
lini, to be taken there at nine years old, to 
have G-iorgione for ones comrade, all this 
was as fortunate for an artistic career as the 
circumstances of Alexander of Macedon were 
for a career of conquest. 
36 



546 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 



LETTER III. 

TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFI* 
CENT NEW STUDIO. 

Pleasure of planning a studio — Opinions of an outsider — Saint 
Bernard— Father Ravignan— Goethe's study and bed-room 
— Gustave Dore's studio — Leslie's painting-room — Turner's 
opinion— Habits of Scott and Dickens— Extremes good- 
Vulgar mediocrity not so good— Value of beautiful views 
to literary men— Montaigne— Views from the author's 
windows. 

Nothing in the life of an artist is more 
agreeable than the building and furnishing of 
the studio in which he hopes to produce his 
most mature and perfect work. It is so pleas- 
ant to labor when we are surrounded by 
beauty and convenience, that painters find a 
large and handsome studio to be an addition 
to the happiness of their lives, and they usually 
dream of it, and plan it, several years before 
the dream is realized. 

Only a few days ago I was talking on this 
very subject with an intellectual friend who 
is not an artist, and who maintained that the 
love of fine studios is in great part a mere illu- 
sion. He admitted the necessity for size, and 
for a proper kind of light, but laughed at 
carved oak, and tapestry, and armor, and the 
knicknacks that artists encumber themselves 
with. He would have it that a mind thorough- 
ly occupied with its own business knew noth- 
ing whatever of the objects that surrounded 
it, and he cited two examples — Saint Bernard, 



S F7?i? O UNDINGS. 547 

who travelled all day by the shore of Lake 
Leman without seeing it, and the pere Ravig- 
nan, who worked in a bare little room with a 
common table of blackened pine and a cheap 
rush-bottomed chair. On this I translated to 
him, from Goethe's life by Lewes, a passage 
which was new to him and delighted him as a 
confirmation of his theory. The biographer 
describes the poet's study as "a low-roofed 
narrow room, somewhat dark, for it is lighted 
only through two tiny windows, and fur- 
nished with a simplicity quite touching to be- 
hold. In the centre stands a plain oval table 
of unpolished oak. No arm-chair is to be seen, 
no sofa, nothing which speaks of ease. A 
plain hard chair has beside it the basket in 
which he used to place his handkerchief. 
Against the wall, on the right, is a long pear- 
tree table, with bookshelves, on which stand 
lexicons and manuals. . . . On the side-wall 
again, a bookcase with some works of poets. 
On the wall to the left is a long desk of soft 
wood, at which he was wont to write. A 
sheet of paper with notes of contemporary his- 
tory is fastened near the door. The same 
door leads into a bed-room, if bed-room it can 
be called, which no maid-of -all -work in Eng- 
land would accept without a murmur : it is a 
closet with a window. A simple bed, an arm- 
chair by its side, and a tiny washing-table 
with a small white basin on it, and a sponge, 
is all the furniture. To enter this room with 
any feeling for the greatness and goodness of 
him who slept here, and who here slept his 



548 THE INTELLECTUAL LIEE, 

last sleep, brings tears into our eyes, and 
makes the breathing deep." 

When I had finished reading this passage, 
my friend exclaimed triumphantly, ' ' There ! 
don't you see that it was just because Goethe 
had imaginative power of a strong and active 
kind that he cared nothing about what sur- 
rounded him when he worked? He had stat- 
ues and pictures to occupy his mind when it 
was disengaged, but when he wrote he pre- 
ferred that bare little cell where nothing was 
to be seen that could distract his attention for 
an instant. Depend u£on it, Goethe acted in 
this matter either from a deliberate and most 
wise calculation, or else from the sure instinct 
of genius." 

Whilst we were on this subject I thought 
over other instances, and remembered my 
surprise on visiting G-ustave Dore in his 
painting-room in Paris. Dore has a Gothic 
exuberance of imagination, so I expected a 
painting-room something like Victor Hugo's 
house, rather barbarous, but very rich and 
interesting, with plenty of carved cabinets, 
and tapestry, and biblos, as they call pictur- 
esque curiosities in Paris. To my surprise, 
there was nothing (except canvases and 
easels) but a small deal table, on which tubes 
of oil-color were thrown in disorder, and two 
cheap chairs. Here, evidently, the pleasure 
of painting was sufficient to occupy the artist ; 
and in the room where he made his illustra- 
tions the characteristics were simplicity and 
good practical arrangements for order, but 



SURliO I 'XDIXGX 54ft 

there was nothing to amuse the imagination. 
Mr. Leslie used to paint in a room which 
was just like any other in the house, and 
had none of the peculiarities of a studio. 
Turner did not care in the least what sort of a 
room he painted in, provided it had a door, 
and a bolt on the inside. Scott could write 
anywhere, even in the family sitting-room, 
with talk going forward as usual : and after 
he had finished Abbot sf or d, he did not write 
in any of its rich and noble rooms, but in a 
simple closet with book-shelves round it. 
Dickens wrote in a comfortable room, well 
lighted and cheerful, and he liked to have 
funny little bronzes on his writing-table. 

The best way appears to be to surround 
ourselves, whenever it can be conveniently 
done, with whatever we know by experience 
to be favorable to our work. I think the 
barest cell monk ever prayed in would be a 
good place for imaginative composition, and 
so too would be the most magnificent rooms 
in Chatsworth or Blenheim. A middling sort 
of place with a Philistine character, vulgar 
upholstery, and vulgar pictures or engrav- 
ings, is really dangerous, because these things 
often attract attention in the intervals of 
labor and occupy it in a mean way. An art- 
ist is always the better for having something 
that may profitably amuse and occupy his 
eye when he quits his picture, and I think it 
is a right instinct which leads artists to sur- 
round themselves with many picturesque and 
beautiful things, not too orderly in their ar- 



550 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

rangement, so that there may be pleasant 
surprises for the eye, as there are in nature. 

For literary men there is nothing so valua- 
ble as a window with a cheerful and beautiful 
prospect. It is good for us to have this re- 
freshment for the eye when we leave off work- 
ing, and Montaigne did wisely to have his 
study up in a tower from which he had exten- 
sive views. 

There is a well-known objection to extensive 
views, as wanting in snugness and comfort, 
but this objection scarcely applies to the es- 
pecial case of literary men. What we want 
is not so much snugness as relief, refresh- 
ment, suggestion, and we get these, as a gen- 
eral rule, much better from wide prospects 
than from limited ones. I have just alluded 
to Montaigne, — will you permit me to imitate 
that dear old philosopher in his egotism and 
describe to you the view from the room I 
write in, which cheers and amuses me con- 
tinually? But before describing this let me 
describe another of which the recollection is 
very dear to me and as vivid as a freshly- 
painted picture. In years gone by, I had 
only to look up from my desk and see a noble 
loch in its inexhaustible loveliness, and a 
mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and 
hourly delight to watch the breezes play 
about the enchanted isles, on the delicate sil- 
very surface, dimming some clear reflection, 
or trailing it out in length, or cutting sharply 
across it with acres of rippling blue. It was 
a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play 



8 1 TRROUNBINGS. 551 

about the crest of Cruachan and Ben Vorich's 
golden head, gray mists that crept upwards 
from the valleys till the sunshine suddenly 
caught them and made them brighter than 
the snows they shaded. And the leagues and 
leagues of heather on the lower land to the 
southward that became like the aniline dyes 
of deepest purple and blue, when the sky was 
gray in the evening — all save one orange- 
streak! Ah, those were spectacles never to 
be forgotten, splendors of light and glory, and 
sadness of deepening gloom when the eyes 
grew moist in the twilight and secretly drank 
their tears. 

And yet, wonderful as it was, that noble 
and passionately beloved Highland scenery 
was wanting in one great element that a 
writer imperatively needs. In all that natu- 
ral magnificence humanity held no place. 
Hidden behind a fir-clad promontory to the 
north, there still remained, it is true, the gray 
ruin of old Kilchurn, and far to the south- 
west, in another reach of the lake, the island- 
fortress of Ardhonnel. But there was not a 
visible city with spires and towers, there 
were only the fir-trees on the little islands 
and a few gravestones on the largest. Be- 
yond, were the depopulated deserts of Bread- 
albane. 

Here, where I write to you now, it seems as 
if mankind were nearer, and the legends of 
the ages written out for me on the surface of 
the world. Under the shadow of Jove's hill 
rises before me one of the most ancient of 



552 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

European cities, soror et ce mulct Romce. She 
bears on her walls and edifices the record of 
jsixty generations. Temple, and arch, and 
'pyramid, all these bear witness still, and so 
do her ancient bulwarks, and many a stately 
tower. High above all, the cathedral spire is 
drawn dark in the morning mist, and often 
in the clear summer evenings it comes 
brightly in slanting sunshine against the 
steep woods behind. Then the old city ar- 
rays herself in the warmest and mellowest 
tones, and glows as the shadows fall. She 
reigns over the whole width of her valley to 
the folds of the far blue hills. Even so ought 
our life to be surrounded by the loveliness of 
nature — surrounded, but not subdued 



INDEX. 



Abolition of custom, how to effect, 252 
Abstinence from newspaper reading, 461 
Accomplishments, masculine and feminine, 80S 
Accumulation of preparatory knowledge. 448 
Accumulators, great, of money, 237 
Activity, mere, a waste of time, 190 
Adult brain, the, 162 
Advantages of few authors to poor, 244 

— of experience, 420 
Affectations of caste. 351 
Affirmations based upon authority, 282 
African traveller and map-makers, 469 
Alcibiades, education of, 117 
Alphabet, Greek. 354 
Amateurism, 134 

Ampere, profoundly scientific, 278 

— anecdote of, 287 
Amusement, necessity of, 454 
Analytical observation, value of, 310 
Anatomy, difficulty of study, 116 
Ancients, incorrect use of word, 146 

— and moderns compared, 255 
Application and opportunities, 244 
Arabia, use of coffee, 40 
Archimedes in the bath, 310 

— at Syracuse, 539 
Aristocracy, liberal and illiberal, 358 

— unwritten religious law ot, 366 

— and democracy, 341 

— spirit of, in reading, 472 
Arnold, Dr., quoted, 144, 535 

— definition of religion, 271 

— intellectual force, 278 

Arnold, Matthew, k ' Self-dependence " quoted, 45fr 



ob4 INDEX. 

Art of reading, 211 

— of resting, 455 

Artist, idea of happy marriage, 289 
Artistic conception of black coats, 249 
Artists, drudgery of, 75 

— poor critics, 95 

Arts, practical pursuit of, 496 
Assimilating power of brain, 162 
Assimilation, power of, 167 
Association of ideas, 168 
Atheism, popular construction, 27*2 
Athenian education, 117 
Attraction of the future, 255 
Author in mortal disease, to an, 58 

— and tradesman compared, 236 

— his advf 33 about notes, 167 

— his study described, 551 

Authors, dependence upon private means, 23%? 

— young, eagerness of, 419 

— selfishness of, 471 

— condition since Goldsmith's time, 509 
Authorship, privilege of, 341 
Available knowledge, 115 

Baker, Sir Samuel, and wife, 302 
Balzac's method in literature, 421 
Barbarian notions, return to, 356 
Bargeman's wife, example of, 417 
Basis, moral, the, 67 
Baudelaire, Charles, quoted, 85 
Beckford, Mr., author of " Vathek," 216 
»- two thousand slaves labor for, 218 
Beer, use of, 36 
Belgian school of painting. 73 
Bixio, Alexandre, death-bed, 53 
Black coats artistic at dinner table, 249 
Blessing of good, cheap literature, 244 
Boar-hunt, the author at, 46 
Bodily exercise, neglect of, 48 
Body and brain, close connection, 21 
Book-making differs from literature, 88 
Books and newspapers, 470 
Bossuet, 232 

Bourgeoisie, low condition, 367 
Brain and body, close connection, 21 



INDEX. 

Brain work unfavorable to digestion, 34 

" Brainleighs, The," quoted, 501 

Bruno, Giordano, passion for philosophy, 79 

— constant work of, 541 
Buckland, Mrs., 303 
Bunyan, results of solitude, 411 
Burns, quoted, 353 

— separation from culture, 353 

— injustice of, 354 

Byron, cause of his death, 21 

— aristocracy of, 347 

— poetical inspiration of, 450 

Capacity and preference, relation, 87 

Careers aided by wealth, 225 

Carelessness, danger of, 224 

Carpenter. Dr.. surrenders practice for science, £38 

Caste, prejudices of, 348 

Catholic Church power in 14th century, 257 

— Roman, belief of, 272 

Central passion of men of ability, 231 
Chance acquaintances. 376 
Character, positive or negative end, 475 
vi Character " quoted, 507 
Charity, intellectual, 438 

Chemist, a product of industrial communities, 530 
Chemistry, intellectual, 105 
Children, imitative power, 162 
v — proper division of time, 482 
Child-teaching, 155 
Christian, muscular, to a, 42 
Christianity, fashionable, 394 
Church of Rome, embodiment of tradition, 261 

— service to European civilization, 261 
Class jealousy, 518 

Classical accomplishments, 351 
Clergy at variance with scientists, 274 

— English, 490 

— restrictions of, 490 

— injustice and inaccuracy of, 491 
Clerical profession, advantages, 489 

— incompatible with intellectual freedom, 49& 
Code of customs constitutes law, 251 

Coffee and tea, use of, 39 
Colloquial use of language, 14? 



5o<5 INDEX. 

Communard's hatred of superiority, 369 

Communicativeness of chance acquaintances, 376 

Community, intelligent, is conservative, 251 

Compensation, principle of, 212 

Completeness of education, 171 

Composition, drudgery of, 72 

Comte, Auguste, laments consequences of anxiety, 23u 

— atheist and scientist, 279 

— voluntary isolation of, 411 

— abstinence from newspapers, 466 

— mysticism of, 468 

Condescension, intellectual advised, 402 
Conjugal felicity, degrees of, 297 
Contemporary literature, indifference to, 171 
Contempt for skill, 503 

— for trade, 522 

Continent, absence of gentlemen, 364 
Controversy, unfairness of, 464 
Conversation of women, 325 

— between the sexes, 3o2 

— generally dull, 398 
Cookery, science of, 35 
Copernicus, monument at Warsaw. 261 
Correspondents, the two contrasted, 315 
Cotton-manufacturer, letter to. 513 
Cotton-trade, effect on the mind, 525 
Country people, ignorance of, 439 
Cream and curacoa, 331 

Creative faculty may be commanded, 85 
Critical faculty of English clergy, 277 
Critics, artists as, 95 
Culture, moral utility, 101 

— proper limitations of. 106 

— how rich may best serve its cause, ^23 

— of middle classes, 241 

— independent of sex, 304 

— induces sincerity, 332 

— hostility of democracy, 369 

— high, isolates, 407 

— facilities for obtaining, 432 

— individual, national gain, 433 

Curate, poor, in prosperous community, 237 
Custom and tradition, 246 

— the one law of society, 248 

— a necessary aid to religion. <74£ 



IEDK£. 

Custoiil nature 'a provision for reform, 250 

— precious legacy of the past, 251 

— not final, but a form, 251 

— opposition unphilosophical, 251 

— how to procure abolition, 252 

— resistance sometimes imperative, 2ott 
Cuvier, a model student, 427 

Decline of old prejudices, 522 
Democracy and aristocracy, 341 

— envious, 360 

— its levelling down tendency, 363 

— intolerance of, 366 

— metropolitan and provincial, 368 

— hostile to culture, 369 
De Saussure. labors of, 229 
De Senancour. 232 

— quoted, 406 
Descent of man, 274 

De Stael. Madame, literary methods, 61 
Development of natural gifts, 172 

— of faculty. 175 

Deviation produced by marriage, 317 
Dickens, narrowness of, 347 

— study described, 549 
Discipline necessary to success, 81 

— object of, 84 

— value and necessity. 449 

— of a professional career, 504 
Discussions with ladies, best course, 337 
Disease, effect of mental labor, 18 
Diseased, experience of, 55 
Disinterestedness, most essential virtue, 91 
Displacement of native tongue, 157 
Dissatisfaction of cultured persons, 431 
Distinctions in trade, 521 

Disuse of native tongue, 156 

Diversity of belief in religion, 265 

Domestic picture, a, 57 

Dore, Gustave, painting-room, 549 

Dress-coat, the young gentleman lacking. 246 

Drill, intellectual, advantages of, 459 

Drinks, question of, 35 

Drudgery in all work, 71 

Dulness of general conversation. 335 



568 INDEX, 

Dunces, illustrious, 80 
Diirer, Albert, MelencoUa, 424 
Duty, occasional, of eccentricity, 253 

— of cultured men to society, 401 

Eagerness of young authors, 419 
Eccentricity sometimes a moral duty, 253 

— sometimes an intellectual duty, 253 
Ecclesiastical authority, remarkable decline, 258 
Economy of time, 177 

Education, 104 

— use of the word, 173 

— completeness of, 171 

— want of thoroughness and reality, 290 

— of sexes compared, 290 

— fashionable, 380 

Educator, professional, practice the best, 226 

Egotism of the uneducated mother, 324 

Electricity practically annihilates distance, 257 

Elevation of intellectual life, 55 

Emerson's rule, 472 

Empire, Second, vulgarity of, 367 

finault, Louis, study of languages, 181 

Encouragement to the poor student, 243 

Energy, human, limitation of, 244 

English officer in Paris, 103 

— strong to resist voluptuousness, 218 

— recognize refining influence of wealth, 240 

— gentry, free expenditures, 241 

— gentleman, methods of culture, 241 

— clergy, criticism of literature, 277 

— tradesman, anecdote of, 313 

— correspondent quoted, 463 
Englishman, eminent, poor remuneration, 234 
Engraving, 76 

Ennui in work, 423 

Equality, theoretic, 372 

Erdan, M., letters by, 469 

Essential virtue, disinterestedness, chief, 91 

Etchers, the woes of, 76 

Etiquette of society bar to intellectual advance, 326 

European civilization, service of church, 261 

— governments resist power of church, 258 
Excesses, intellectual, dangers of, 101 
Excitement, cerebral intellectual products, 445 



INDEX. 559 

Exercise, bodily, need of. 49 
Exeter, bishop of, quoted, 70 
Experience, the lesson, 191 

— advantages of, 420 
Experiment replaces tradition, 254 
Experiments on public taste, 235 

Facilities for obtaining culture, 432 
Facility of acquiring languages, 101 
Faculty, development of. 175 
Fane, Julian, religion of, 267 

— late hours, 467 

Faraday, intellectual career, 279, 505 

— a Sandemanian, 280 
Fashionable education, 380 

— religion, 393 
Fickleness of fashion, 392 

Fine arts, technical difficulties, 70 

— pursuit of, 498 

Five facts regarding languages, 152 
France, invasion by Germans, 95 

— intellectual isolation, 148 

— vulgar language of people, 365 

— low condition of bourgeoisie, 367 
French monarchy, question of, 94 

— college, to a principal of, 137 

— cook, perfection of art, 104 

— officer, incident of, 362 

— peasantry, intellectual apathy, 241 

— peasantry, parsimony, 241 

— peasantry without newspapers, 466 

— school of painting, 73 

— students of English, isolated, 122 

Frenchman writes a school-primer with good results, 284 
Fresco-painters, troubles of, 76 
Friendships of the intellect, reality of, 375 

— succession of, 376 
Future, attraction of, 255 

Galton, Mr., advice to travellers, 416 
Garibaldi, Italian follower of, 45 
Generation, our, poetical events, 95 
Genius, popular impression of, 447 

— military, of Napoleon, 448 

— depwident upon culture, 450 



560 INDEX, 

Gentlemen, absence of, on Continent. 304 

German invasion of France, 95 

Germans, intellectual labor of, 200 

Germany, secular power resists ecclesiastical, 258 

Girardin, St. Marc, 255 

"Give it time,"' 193 

Goethe, habits of, 33 

— pecuniary independence. 233 

— intellectual activity, 427 

— interest in intellectual labor, 42? 

— production of Werther, 428 

— at bombardment of Verdun, 540 
Goldsmith, Oliver, elaborate dress, 390 
Good use of opportunity, 212 

— and cheap literature, 244 

Government patronage of intellectual pursuits, 138 

— and priests lack harmony, 492 
Great problem of human life, 242 
Greek, general view of, 146 

— uselessness in industry and commerce, 354 

— alphabet, imaginary terrors. 36S 
Growing old, the rapidity of , 59 

Habits, sure to be acquired, 478 

Hack- writing, 508 

Heine, last years of, 534 

Helps, Sir Arthur, quoted, 186, 230 

Hermit, experience of, 405 

Highland scenery lacks humanity, 551 

Historians, partiality of, 95 

— future, value of journalist. 469 
Historical party in England, 257 

— party in France, 257 
Honesty, importance of, note, 97 

— value of, 265 

— foundation of intellectual life, 274 
Hoogstraten and Rembrandt, 378 
Hours of idleness, 198 
Household, intellectual level of, 434 
How to learn a language, 147 

— women help men, 297 

Hugo, Victor, intellectual decadence, 95 
Human energy, limitation of, 244 

— race, longevity, 274 

Humboldt, Alexander, intellectual greatness, 90 



INDEX. 5#1 

Humboldt, Alexander, fortune servant of ambition, 223 

— in South America, 516 

— youth of, 538 

Hurry, evil consequences of, 209 
Huxley, Professor, quoted, 37.3 
Hygienics, intellectual, 415 

Ideai, division of life, 412 
Ideas, association of, 168 

— ratio of narrowness, 241" 
Idleness, hours of, 198 

— value of, 458 

Illusions, popular, concerning languages, 151 

Immorality of intellectual people, 99 

Inapplicability of past experience, 256 

Incompatibility, fashionable and intellectual life. 394 

Incongruous associations, 170 

Indirect uses of study, 131 

Indolent men who like to be hurried, 207 

Industrial classes, results of their labor, 520 

Inf allibility of the pope, 281 

Infraction of custom, penalties. 247 

Ingres, counsel to pupils, 421 

Ingres, Madame, the first, 289 

Inspiration, sister of daily labor, 85 

— waiting for, 449 
Instinct of accumulation, 237 

— of solitude, 409 

Intellect does not recognize authority, 282 
Intellectual and religious questions, difference, 270 

— attainments of two houses of Parliament, 240 

— class necessary, 515 

— deviations resulting from marriage. 317 

— kingdom, difficult entrance of the rich, 220 

— life, inward law, 88 
Intellectual requirements of, 221 

— foundation, difficulty, 274 

— differs from religious life, 275 

— based upon personal investigation. 275 

— a solitary one, 298 

— absence of caste, 346 

— man rebels against custom, 250 

— two courses open in marriage, 287 

— methods independent of tradition, 28S 

— nature of women, 306 

36 



5(52 INDEX. 

Intellectual natures need intellectual activity , 42*0 

— progress, necessity of, 521 

— reaction against money making, 229 

— religion, foundations of, 272 

— religion, search and result, 273 

— separation of the sexes, 303 

— stupidity of amassing money, 237 

— workers, suggestions to, 18 
International marriages, 162 
Interruption, evils of, 204 
Intolerance of democracies, 366 
Intoxication, literary, 67 
Invasion of France by Germans, 95 
Inventions a factor in politics, 256 

— mainly due to men, 311 
Inward law of intellectual life, 88 
Irregular verbs, time- wasters, 193 
Irrigation, intellectual, 436 
Isolation of high culture, 407 
Italian deserter, the, 157 

Jacquemont, Victor, letters of, 200 

Japanese, revolution of thought and practice, 254 

Jealousy of class, 518 

J ohnson, dignity of his threadbare sleeves, 390 

Joubert. 441 

— productive power, 443 

— quoted, 255 
Journalism in England, 511 
Journalist, value to future historians, 469 
Journals, party, injustice of, 464 

Kant, Immanuel, habits of, 27 

Keats, genius dependent upon culture, 450 

Kepler, early struggles, 232 

Knight service in society, 251 

Knowledge of mankind, 457 

— selection of, 108 

Labor, pecuniary rewards of, 133 

— of previous ages, disdain for, 260 

— dominant and subordinate, 478 

— of preparation, 448 

LaJla Rookh, Moore's trials, 72 
language, Latin as a common, 12? 



1M)EX. 563 

Language, facility of acquisition, 161 

— in France, vulgarity of, 305 
Languages, popular illusions, 151 

— five facts, 152 

— separation of, 159 
Late hours, 477 

Latin, modern ignorance of, 121 

— island, a, 128 
Latinist. the modern, 121 

Law, complex code of customs, 251 

— of society, 248 

Lawyers, superiority of. in certain directions, 405 

Lay element of Europe, powerful, 491 

Legal profession. adA antages of, 493 

Leslie's studio, 549 

Levels, intellectual, 435 

Lever, Charles. quoted v 501 

Lewes' " Life of Goethe " quoted, 451, 547 

— quoted. 544 

Lewis, John, practice work of, 74 

Life, an ideal division of. 412 

Limited knowledge and experience of the poor, 240 

Limitation of human energy. 244 

Line-engraver, labor of. 76 

Linguist, the modern, 150 

Listening, the art of, 398 

Literature, to a student of, 130 

— good and cheap, 244 

— criticism of English clergy. 2?7 

— contemporary, indifference to, 471 
Literary intoxication, 67 

Littre quoted. 259 

Locality, mental effect of, 530 

Locke quoted, 85 

Loitering element in liberal education, 198 

Longevity, young men careless of, 65 

— of human race, 274 
Lost opportunities, 199 

Louvre, wanton destruction of, 368 
Love, necessity of. 454 
Lullo, Raimond, Oriental missionary. .541 
11 Luxury," article in Cornhill Magazine, 315 

— quoted, 316 

Lytton, Robert, letter of Lady "Westmoreland, 76t 

— estimate cf Julian Fane, 351 



564 1XDEX. 

Man unlike a planet, 452 

— need of pluck, 70 

Mankind, operations of riches and poverty, &&) 

— best knowledge of, 457 
Marriage, 285 

— true, a slow intergrowth, 286 

— general ignorance regarding, 286 

— complex effects, 287 

— of intellectual men, 287 

— a distinguished artist's views, 289 

— ideal for man of literary culture, 290 

— intellectual, 291 

— how decided, 293 

— of French professors, 294 

— of the Scotch lawyer, 296 

— the intellectual ideal, 299 

— the necessity of keeping up its interest, 301 

— frequently leads to intellectual deviation, 317 

— risk of eccentric men. 323 

— semi-publicity, 323 
Marriages, international. 162 
Maximilian, Emperor, execution of, 95 
Mediaeval builders, 260 

Medicine, profession of, 495 
Meissonier, practice for self -instruction, 74 
" Melencolia " of Albert Durer, 424 
Memory, defective, advantage x>f , 165 

— selecting, 166 

— rational art of, 169 

Men, how helped by women, 296 

— disguise their thoughts from women, 330 
Mental labor not injurious to healthy persons, 18 

— may aggravate disease, 18 
Mental stimulants. 69 

— refusals should be heeded, 88 

— powers, immoderate use, 20 

— work, physical preparation, 479 
Metaphor of the mountains, 228 

" Midshipman Easy,*' allusion to, 188 
Military genius of Napoleon, 448 

— profession, 497 

— profession, intellectual poverty of, 498 
Milton, forced retirement, 411 

Mind of a fashionable person, 380 
Minds, three classes., 443 



INDEX. 565 

Miracles, belief in, 272 
Miscalculation, bad results, 196 
Miscellaneous reading, our debt to, 132 
Mitford, Miss, quoted, 471 
Mobility of fashionable taste, 392 
Modern education, 116 

— inventions, power of, 256 

— languages, to student of, 14J 

— languages, limits of soundness, 183 

— mind looks forward, 255 

Modern Painters, result of long study, 229 

— work of genius and wealth, 229 
Money, the influences of, 216 

— restraints of, 238 

— the guardian of peace, 238 

— accumulated labor of the past, 238 

— protector of intellectual life, 238 
Montaigne, early education of, 121 

— purchases of books, 405 

— his tower, 550 

Moore's trials with " Lalla Rookh, 1 ' 72 
3Ioral basis, the. 67 

— utility of culture, 101 
Morality, individual theories, 99 

— public opinion regulates, 257 

— general advance of, 258 
Morbid mind, cure for. 430 
Morris, a diligent student, 450 

Mother and son, difference in religious views, 264 

— the uneducated, 325 

Mulready, preparation for new picture, 74 
Multiplicity of modern studies, 120 
Muscular Christian, to a, 42 
Music, refining influence of, 44, 132 

— limits of soundness, 183 

Napoleon, military genius of, 448 

Napoleon III., overthrow of, 95 

National intellectual life, 433 

Native tongue, results of disuse, 156 

Natural connection between wealth and culture, 240 

— gifts, development of, 172 

— laws, independent working, 282 
Nature, extraordinary reactions , 109 

— high life in, 359 



566 INDEX, 

Nature, provision for intellectual life in marriage, 292 

— will be obeyed, 248 
Naval profession, 497 

Navy, English, reconstruction of, ~62 
Neapolitan servant, case of, 158 
Necessity a help in industrial pursuits, 525 

— disturbs higher intellectual life, 225, 226 
Need of society and solitude, 403 
Negative end of character, 475 

— qualification for work, 109 
Neighbors, education of, 437 
Newspaper reading, abstinence from, 460 
Newspapers as educators, 437 

— daily house-talk of the world, 465 

— in United States, 466 

— in France, 466 

Newton, desire for solitude, 410 
Nervous system, physiological action, IT 
Nightingale, Florence, quoted, 204 
Night-work, medical objection to, 481 
Noblesse, old. ignorance of, 363 
Nomad, English, life of, 530 
Nomadic habits of higher classes, 356 

Obedience to nature, necessity of, 248 
Object of intellectual discipline, 84 
Occasion, mistaken estimates, 186 
Opposition to custom unphilosophical, 251 

— of method between intellect and faith, 282 
Oil painting, dangers of, 76 

Old prejudices declining, 522 
Opportunities lost, 199 

— unlimited, danger of, 214 

— and application, 244 
Origin of discipline. 82 
Orleans, Duchess of, 220 

— system of mental culture, 220 

Orthodoxy no guaranty of intellectual capacity, 280 
Outlet, intellectual, necessary, 435 

Painters, intellectual discipline of, 498 
Painting, different schools, 73 
Palgrave's, Mr., " Travels in Arabia," 40 
Papacy, decline and fall of temporal power, 469 
papal infallibility, 281 



INDEX. 567 



Paris, siege of, 95 

Parliament, houses of, high attainments, 240 

Parsimony of French peasantry, 241 

Party journals, injustice, 464 

Past, custom a precious legacy, 251 

— not reliable as a guide, 256 
Patriotism as a stimulant, 69 
Peasants, instruction of, 438 
Pecuniary rewards of labor, 233 
Pendennis, Major, typical life, 65 
Philistine intellects, 202 

Philosophy, popular acceptation of term, 273 

— a truly intellectual. 417 
Physical basis, the, 17 

— repugnances of surgeons, 87 

— preparation for mental labor, 479 
Physician, social rise of, 496 
Physiological action of nervous system, 17 
Pioneers, intellectual. 516 

Planet, dissimilarly of man to, 452 

Plans should be well arranged, 189 

Pluck, value of, 70 

Poet, the true, 447 

Poetical events of our generation, 95 

— teachings, true intentions, 453 
Political influence of culture, 436 
Politics, preponderance in newspapers, 465 
Polyglot waiters, 165 

Poor, limited knowledge and experience. 240 

— incompetent for work of Parliament. 240 

— independence of public opinion, 243 

— man desirous of culture, consolation, 243 
Pope of Rome, affirmed infallibility, 281 
Popular illusions regarding languages, 151 

— impression regarding genius, 447 
Positive end of character, 475 
Poverty and peace incompatible, 223 

— unfavorable to intellectual life, 224 

— advantage in liberal professions, 226 

— obstacle to intellectual perfection, 239 
Power of assimilation, 167 

— of time, 176 

Practical suggestions to intellectual workers, 18 
Practice, best professional as educator. ?9fi 

— of journalism, 511 



568 INDEX. 

Preference and capacity, relation, 87 
Prejudices of caste, 348 

— old, decline of, 522 
Preparatory labor, 448 
Prescott, Mr., instance of, 63 
Preservation of the senses, 60, 64 
Priests, manner of religious teaching, 2*0 

— and government not harmonious, 492 
Prince Consort, example and influence, 305 
Problem, great, of life, 242 

Products of cerebral excitement, 446 
Professions, liberal, advantages of poverty, 22$ 

— test of, 392 

— and trades, 488 

— purpose of, 507 
Progress, satisfactions of, 79 

— its debt to rebellion, 250 

— of work, interest necessary, 416 
Propositions about modern languages, 152 
Protection in intellectual pursuits, 137 
Public taste, experiments on, 235 

— opinion, regulator of morality, 257 

— opinion in France, 258 
Purpose of a profession, 506 

Qualifications for work, 109 

Railways, unforeseen effect, 356 

Rational art of memory, 169 

Ravignon, pere, 547 

Reactions of Nature, 100 

Reading, miscellaneous, advantage of, 132 

— painfuLto uneducated, 438 

— newspapers, abstinence from, 460 

— practised by most people, 474 
Rebellion, debt of progress to, 250 
Reconciliation of poverty and the soul, 242 
Refinements of a language, 164 

Reform and progress of custom, 250 

Refusals, mental, should be heeded, 88 

Regret for Lost time, 456 

Regularity of work, 446 

Regulated economy of time, 203 

Relation between preference and capacity W 

— of trivial events to great principles, 329 



Religion as a stimulant, 69 

— requires aid of custom, 248 

— different views of mother and son, 264 

— indefinable, 271 

— according to popular instinct, 272 

— intellectual foundation of, 273 

— influence of caste-law. 336 
Religious vitality, periods of, 265 

— teaching, 270 

— and intellectual questions, difference, 270 

— creed does not weaken critical faculty, 277 

— belief, test of, 272 

Rembrandt, answer to Hoogstraten, 378 

Renan, Iff., charges Second Empire with vulgarity, 367 

Repugnances to be overcome, 87 

Resisting power of adult brain, 162 

Rest, necessary in intellectual labor, 454 

Resting, the art of, 455 

Restoration of French monarchy, 94 

Restraints of money, 238 

Retreats demanded by intellectual life, 221 

Return to barbarism, 356 

Rich man a director of work, 219 

— social diversions of, 220 

— vulgar people. 242 

Road to success, commonly gradual increase, 226 

Roman Catholic, belief of, 272 

Romans, education of, 118 

Roscoe. William, Italian studies, 134 

Rosse, Lord, colossal telescope, 220 

— useful application of wealth, 220 
Rossini, advice to young composer, 1 95 
Ruskin, Mr., value of artistic perception, 62 

— extract from Modern Painters, 215 

— wealth of material, 229 

— career of, 229 

Sacerdotal system, 270 

Sadness of intellectual workers, 426 

Sainte Beuve, example of self -discipline, 83 

— system of living, 236 

— atheist and scientist, 279 

— quoted, 458 

Saint-Bernard at Lake Leman, 547 
Saint-Hilaire, Gcoffroy, in blindness, 57 



57:) INDEX. 

Saint-Hilaire, Geoffrey, at Alexandria, 540 
Sand, George, working under pressure, 23 

— quoted, 86 

— novel of " Valvedre, 1 ' 319 
Satisfactions of intellectual riches, 424 
Schiller, literary hack-work of, 233 
Schoolmaster, thankless office of, 337 
Science, methods and laws of, 283 

— requires heat and heroism, 276 

— of living, 395 

Scientific cookery, importance of, 35 

— writers and thinkers, independence, 258 

— at variance with clergy, 274 

Scott, Sir "Walter, physical exercise, 24 

— habits of, 33 

— writing-closet, 549 

Secular power resists ecclesiastical, 258 
Selection of knowledge, 108 
Selfishness of authors, 471 
Senses, usefulness to intellectual life, GO 
Separation of languages, 159 
Shelley, boating exercise, 24 

— the morality of, 99 

— writings unprofitable, 232 

— desire for solitude, 409 
Ships of the line, old, 262 

Shopkeepers, treatment by English authors, 34S 
Siege of Paris, 95 
Silent student, attainments, 441 
Simon Jules, allusion to, 141 
/ Sincerity induced by culture, 332 
Skill, indifference to, 502 
Skip judiciously in reading. 211 
Small talk in England and France, 399 
Smiles, Mr., Character quoted, 506 
Smith, Sydney, quoted, 173 

— common sense of, 277 
Smoking, moderate and excessive, 39 
Social diversions of the rich, 220 

Society, penalties for infringing custom, 247 

— will be obeyed, 248 

— desires harmony, 249 

— and solitude, 374 

— fashionable demands, 380 

— external deference to culture, 393 



ixdex. tin 



Solitude and society, 374 

— traditional view of, 405 

— effects upon man, 406 

Soul and poverty, reconciliation, 242 
Soundness, requisite to best success, 179 
Spain, secular power resists ecclesiastical, 33B 
Spenser the fables of, 251 
State schools, exclusion of theology, 491 
Station fetters intellect, 371 
Steam makes cities of States, 257 
Stimulants, effects of, 37 

— mental, 69 

Stone in Glen Croe, the, 455 
Structural relations of languages, 170 
Student, the poor, encouragement, 246 

— the poor, sad story, 344 

— dangers of society, 382 
Study, indirect uses of, 131 

— of medicine, 495 

Substitution of experiment for tradition, 254 
Success, result of discipline, 81 

— common road, gradual increase, 22Q 
Sue, Eugene, daily habits, 24 
Surgeon, social rise of, 496 
SmToundings of cultivated men, 434, 531 
Swiss gentleman, anecdote of, 276 
Systematic arrangement of work, 478 

Taste, public, experiments on, 235 

Tea and coffee, use of, 39 

Teachings, poetical, true intentions, 453 

Telescope, colossal, of Lord Rosse, 220 

Temptations of wealth, 218 

Test of religious belief, 272 

Theology, exclusion from state schools. 491 

Theoretic equality amongst men, 372 

Thiers, antecedents of, 463 

— elevation of, 464 

Thoughts upon " Government " quoted, 3D 
Thrift, the principle of, 193 
Tillier, Claude, doctrine of, 457 
Time, the power of, 176 

— loss of, 177 

— mistaken estimates, 186 

— regulated economy, 203 



572 INDEX. 

Titian, early surroundings, 544 
Tobacco, use of, 38 
Trade distinctions, 521 
— contempt for, 522 
Trades and professions, 488 
Tradition and custom, 246 

— rejected for experiment, 254 

— decline of authoritative influence, 230 

— church of Rome, embodiment, 261 

— in industrial and fine arts, note, 263 
Training, intellectual, 214 

Tranquillity conducive to intellectual success, 480 

Travellers, Mr. Galton's advice, 416 

Triumph of discipline, 86 

Trivial events, relation to great principles, 328 

Truth a law of religion, 265 

Turner's studio, 549 

Tyco Brahe, princely ease, 233 

— surroundings of, 537 

Ultramontane party, 91 

Undisciplined writer, to an, 80 

United States, influence of newspapers, 4^c/ 

Unknown element of all problems, 18S 

Unproductive class, the, 444 

Utility, moral, of culture, 101 

" Valvedre," extract from, 319 
Variety of labor for children, 482 
Various pursuits, objection to, 114 
Vathek, written at a single sitting, 26 

— author of, 216 
Vatican, council of, 127 

Vinci, Leonardo da, education of, 172 

Waiting for inspiration, 449 
Want hinders intellectual pursuits, 231 
Warsaw, monument to Copernicus, 261 
Wealth, double temptation of, 218 

— an obstacle to labor, 219 

— inordinate respect for, 502 

Werther indicative of Goethe's ennui, 428 
Westmoreland. Lady, letter to Robert Lytton, 20 s / 
Why men choose their wives, 292 
Wine, use of, 35 



INDEX. 

Wives of French professors, 294 
Women and marriage, 285 

— how they help men, 297' 

— incapacity for solitary mental labor, 303 

— intellectual nature of, 306 

— absence of scientific curiosity, 308 

— rarity of invention among, 310 

— lack inherent force for advance, 311 

— do not hear the truth from men, 330 

— conversation of, 325 

Wordsworth, love of pedestrian excursions, 51 

— failure as a London journalist, 232 

— happy results of a legacy, 232 

— advice to tourists, 288 

Work, systematic arrangement desirable, 478 
Work, article in Cornhill Magazine, 480 
World recognizes performance only, 500 
Woepke, Franz, remarkable extent of studies, 10# 

— mathematician and orientalist, 223 

— pension of Italian prince, 223 
Writing against time, 209 

— as a profession, 509 

Young men careless oi iong^v&y, €£• 



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